The History of Condoms

1000 B.C.
The ancient Egyptians used a linen sheath for protection against disease.

100-200 A.D.
The earliest evidence of condom use in Europe are scenes from cave paintings at Combarelles in France.

1500s
An Italian doctor by the name of Gabrielle Fallopius (for whom, coincidentally, the female fallopian tube was named) suggested that linen sheath condoms be used to protect against syphilis, a deadly epidemic at that time in history.

1600s
Reports say farmers in Condom, France began using sheep guts as condoms, possibly the origin of the lambskin condom.

Allegedly, the name "condom" was coined when Charles II was given oiled sheep intestines to use as condoms by a Dr. Condom or Quondam. However, some believe the name "condom" came from the Latin word "condus" which means "vessel".

1700s
The English connection may explain the name legendary lover Casanova gave to his sheath. He would never mount without his "redingote anglaise", his English riding coat.

1843
Goodyear and Hancock began to mass-produce condoms made out of vulcanized rubber, which is a stronger and more elastic material. Men are advised that these rubber condoms can be washed and reused until they crumble.

1930s
Liquid latex manufacturing supersedes crepe rubber. It is still the basis for manufacture today.

1990s
New technology has considerably improved the condom and enabled the production of far more sophisticated versions than our ancestors were used to. The latest development is Durex Avanti made from a unique polyurethane material, Duron, which is twice as strong as latex! enabling a thinner, more sensitive film.

Today
Avanti Condoms by Durex are made from a unique non-latex polyurethane film and coated in a silky smooth lubricant. Each Avanti Condom is electronically tested for durability.

Condom sales reach nine billion worldwide.

Turkey facts on Thanksgiving

Turkeys can fly.

Wild turkeys feed on the ground, which might explain the myth of their flightlessness. They can in fact soar for short bursts at up to 55 mph. But their tendency to stay on or near the ground contributed to successful hunting that brought the wild population of turkeys down to about 30,000 in the 1930s. There are now 7 million of them.

Dark meat is rare because ...
Meat is muscle. And muscle is fed by blood. In the blood is myoglobin, which binds with oxygen and stores it in muscles for when it's needed. Myoglobin also makes meat dark. Muscles that are used most, like those in drumsticks (legs), have more myoglobin. Domestic turkeys are too fat to fly, so they don't use their breast muscles much, which is why breast meat is white. The breast of a wild turkey is entirely different, darker (and far tastier for those who are game).

Turkey eggs wouldn't sell.
Chickens are champion egg-producers. Turkeys, not so good. Turkey eggs are bigger, so their nests tie up coop space. And farmers have learned that they make more raising turkeys for meat rather than eggs. Oh, and some turkeys are protective of their eggs, making the gathering more challenging.

It's not the turkey that makes you sleepy.
Turkey contains a natural chemical called tryptophan, which we need to build proteins for our bodies. Indeed, tryptophan is also related to the production of serotonin, which helps us sleep. But all meat has about the same amount of tryptophan. Cheddar cheese has a lot more. What really makes you sleepier after a Thanksgiving meal compared to other meals is eating too many carbohydrates, from potatoes to pies. Alcohol can contribute, too.

Dinosaurs had wishbones too.

The wishbone, called a furcula, is the fusion of two collarbones at the sternum. It's where a bird’s flying muscles hook up. It's elastic and great for flapping. Turns out T. Rex and the Velociraptor had wishbones, too. While they didn't fly, this fairly recent discovery is one of the many bits of evidence that shows birds evolved from dinosaurs.

For more details: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34154841/ns/technology_and_science-science/

The History of the Kiss

Historians really don't know much about the early history of kissing. Four Vedic Sanskrit texts, written in India around 1500 B.C., appear to describe people kissing. This doesn't mean that nobody kissed before then, and it doesn't mean that Indians were the first to kiss. Artists and writers may have just considered kissing too private to depict in art or literature.

After its first mention in writing, kissing didn't appear much in art or literature for a few hundred years. The Indian epic poem "Mahabharata" describes kissing on the lips as a sign of affection. The "Mahabharata" was passed down orally for several hundred years before being written down and standardized around 350 A.D. The Indian religious text "Vatsyayana Kamasutram," or the "Kama Sutra," also describes a variety of kisses. It was written in the 6th century A.D. Anthropologists who believe that kissing is a learned behavior theorize that the Greeks learned about it when Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 B.C.

There aren't many records of kissing in the Western world until the days of the Roman Empire. Romans used kisses to greet friends and family members. Citizens kissed their rulers' hands. And, naturally, people kissed their romantic partners. The Romans even came up with three different categories for kissing: Osculum was a kiss on the cheek, Basium was a kiss on the lips and Savolium was a deep kiss.

For more details: http://people.howstuffworks.com/kissing.htm

World's most polluted river

It was once a gently flowing river, where fishermen cast their nets, sea birds came to feed and natural beauty left visitors spellbound.Villagers collected water for their simple homes and rice paddies thrived on its irrigation channels. Today, the Citarum river in crisis, choked by the domestic waste of nine million people and thick with the cast-off from hundreds of factories. So dense is the carpet of refuse that the tiny wooden fishing craft which float through it are the only clue to the presence of water.

Their occupants no longer try to fish. It is more profitable to forage for rubbish they can salvage and trade - plastic bottles, broken chair legs, rubber gloves - risking disease for one or two pounds a week if they are lucky.On what was United Nations World Environment Day, the Citarum, near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, displayed the shocking abuse that mankind has subjected it to.


More than 500 factories, many of them producing textiles which require chemical treatment, line the banks of the 200-mile river, the largest waterway in West Java, spewing waste into the water.

Twenty years ago, this was a place of beauty, and the river still served its people well.As one local man, Arifin, recalled: "Our wives did their washing there and our children swam."Its demise began with rapid industrialisation during the late 1980s.

In December 5, 2008, The Asian Development Bank (ADB) agreed to support Indonesia's efforts to clean up its most important river, the Citarum, through a $500 million multi-tranche loan, which will run for 15 years.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-460077/Is-worlds-polluted-river.html

The 515 chemicals women put on their bodies everyday

Women and beauty products - it's a love affair that's been going on for centuries. And no wonder. There's nothing like a new lipstick or favourite perfume to make us look and feel good. Or so we thought...

In fact, according to a new report, most of our favourite cosmetics are cocktails of industrially produced and potentially dangerous chemicals that could damage our health and, in some cases, rather than delivering on their potent 'anti-ageing' promise, are causing us to age faster.

Research by Bionsen, a natural deodorant company, found that the average woman's daily grooming and make-up routine means she 'hosts' a staggering 515 different synthetic chemicals on her body every single day.

Many of those are also used in products such as household cleaners, and have been linked to a number of health problems from allergies and skin sensitivity to more serious hormonal disturbances, fertility problems and even cancer.

Parabens, for example, which are designed to preserve the shelf-life of your cosmetics, are one of the most widely used preservatives in the world, and are found in shampoos, hair gels, shaving gels and body lotions. But their use is becoming increasingly controversial - a range of different studies has linked them to serious health problems including breast cancer, as well as fertility issues in men.

Click on the picture for enlarged view.

For more details: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/beauty/article-1229275/Revealed--515-chemicals-women-bodies-day.html

Facts you didn't know about your body

Our body is capable of producing aspirin.

Eating fruits and vegetables may help the human body make its own aspirin. Findings from the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry indicate that study participants who received benzoic acid, a natural substance in fruits and vegetables, could make their own salicylic acid, the key component that gives aspirin its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties.

Taking a nap at work is good for you.

A 20 minutes nap can improve your overall alertness, boost your mood, and increase productivity. William Anthony, co-author of The Art of Napping at Work (Larson Publications, 1999), says the post-nap boost can last for several hours. In addition, your heart may reap benefits from napping. In a six-year study of Greek adults, researchers found that that men who took naps at least three times a week had a 37 percent lower risk of heart-related death.

Ejaculation may cause men to sneeze.

Some men experience pain, headaches, or sneezing as a result of ejaculation. The increased activity in the nervous system during orgasm may be the culprit in triggering headaches. A possible explanation for the sneezing is that in the brain, the center for orgasms is close to the centers for yawning and sneezing.

Every person has a unique tongue print.

Just like fingerprints. The tongue is a unique organ in that it can be stuck out of mouth for inspection, and yet it is otherwise well protected in the mouth and is difficult to forge. The tongue also presents both geometric shape information and physiological texture information which are potentially useful in identity verification applications.

The foot is home to the body's thickest area of skin.

The skin on the palms and the soles of the feet is 4 mm thick and the thickest skin in the body, the heel portions of the feet being the thickest portions. It's also got the most sweat glands than in any other area.

The body is taller in the morning than in the evening.

The body is taller in the morning than in the evening. You might want to schedule that basketball game for first thing in the morning. That's because our bodies are on average about half an inch taller in the morning, thanks to excess fluid between our discs, which is replenished while we sleep. As the day goes on, and our bodies undergo the strain of standing, the discs get compressed and the fluid seeps out, so the body loses that small bit of extra height.

Body position affects your memory.

Can't remember your anniversary, hubby? Try getting down on one knee. Memories are highly embodied in our senses. A scent or sound may evoke a distant episode from one's childhood. The connections can be obvious (a bicycle bell makes you remember your old paper route) or inscrutable. A recent study helps decipher some of this embodiment. An article in the January 2007 issue of Cognition reports that episodes from your past are remembered faster and better while in a body position similar to the pose struck during the event.

Blondes have more hair.

They're said to have more fun, and they definitely have more hair. Hair color determines how dense the hair on your head is. The average human has 100,000 hair follicles, each of which is capable of producing 20 individual hairs during a person's lifetime. Blondes average 146,000 follicles while people with black hair tend to have about 110,000 follicles. Those with brown hair fit the average with 100,000 follicles and redheads have the least dense hair, with about 86,000 follicles.

The average person expels flatulence 14 times each day.

Even if you'd like to think you're too dignified to pass gas, the reality is that almost everyone will at least a few times a day. Digestion causes the body to release gases which can be painful if trapped in the abdomen and not released.

Having orgasms prevent men from prostate cancer.

Two large studies, reported in 2003 and 2004, found that middle-aged men who had at least 4 orgasms a week had a reduced risk of prostate cancer by as much as one-third. Some researchers speculate that ejaculations may clear the prostate of carcinogens.

Source: http://www.oceanofweb.com/healthfitness/facts-body.html

Arkansas cop uses taser on 10 years old girl

It was an encounter one Ozark 10-year-old will likely never forget.

Called to a home to help control an allegedly "unruly child," an Ozark police officer was reportedly told by the girl's mother that he could use the electric weapon to subdue her,according to 40/29 News Arkansas.

However, the girl supposedly kicked the officer in the groin when he approached. "He had no other choice [but to Taser her]," Ozark Police Choief Jim Noggle reportedly said. "He had to get the child under control."

According to the Associated Press, the officer's name is Dustin Bradshaw. His aggressive approach to dealing with a child has the girl's father enraged.

"If you can't pick the kid up and take her to your car, handcuff her, then I don't think you need to be an officer," Anthony Medlock, the girl's father reportedly said.

Ozark police argued that had the officer grabbed the girl, he could have hurt her. "If you grab somebody, you can slip an arm out of joint," the police chief added. "They can slip from you and fall on the ground."

The department's policy is to use a Taser on anyone who is thought to be a threat to others, regardless of age or mental stature, according to 40/29 News. Other area departments have greater restrictions on Taser use.

Medlock also reportedly said the incident is not the first in which the girl's mother has called the police on her daughter. He plans to seek custody of the girl due to the latest police encounter.

The girl has not been named because she is a minor.

Source: http://rawstory.com/2009/11/arkansas-cop-taser-10yearold-girl/

Rubik's Cube Facts

Rubik's Cube was invented in 1974 by Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian architect and sculptor. He called his invention the "Magic Cube". It was renamed the Rubik's Cube by the Ideal Toy Corporation in 1980.

More than 300 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold worldwide. If all the cubes were placed on top of each other it would be enough to reach the North Pole from the South Pole!

Rubik applied for his Hungarian patent in January 1975 and left his invention with a small toy making cooperative in Budapest. The patent approval finally came in early 1977 and the first Cubes appeared at the end of 1977. By this time, Erno Rubik was married.

Ernő Rubik became the first self-made millionaire from the communist block and it took Erno Rubik one month to solve the cube for the first time.

The Cube has 43 quintillion different possible configurations (43,252,003,274,489,856,000 to be precise) and only ONE solution.

The Inventor of Coffee Cup Sleeves

The coffee cup sleeves used by millions of people everyday was invented by Jim Chelossi from San Carlos. It all started in 1988 when Jim had a 250 square foot building, his first coffee shop, the Coffee Club, in Belmont, California. "I didn’t know much about running a coffee shop then and opened my first one without a business license" Jim said. After a couple of years, the Coffee Club was a huge success with a total of 5 shops.

In 1991, more and more people started to ask him for a second cup on their coffee due to how hot the cup was on their hands. The cups were costing 8 cents a cup then and he had to think of a way to cut this expense.

In the San Carlos store he grabbed a napkin and created the idea of the sleeve. He drew a sketch of his idea and some rough costs on the napkin. The final cost of the sleeve was 3 cents and that was a savings of 5 cents for every sleeve he used instead of a second cup.

Then he decided to sell advertisements on the sleeve and that paid for all of the sleeves he used in the shops. Then he began selling sleeves to other distributors which would in turn sell them to other coffee shops.

That was the birth of the sleeve.

He patented his idea in 1995. A simple yet brilliant invention.

Source: http://www.mrlim.com/2008/05/interview-with-jim-chelossi-inventor-of-the-coffee-sleeve/

Why do airline seats have to be in an upright position?

There are two main reasons why flight attendants pester people to keep those seats up—to keep injuries to a minimum during a crash and to clear the maximum amount of space for a quick exit.

The science is pretty basic, as explained by Brian Manning, a flight attendant for Mesa Airlines. "When the seat is up, it is locked. When the seat is back, it's not locked. In the event of an emergency, an unlocked seat has more force during impact, and the thrusting forward of that seat can cause passenger injury."

Like a catapult, the farther back the seat, the greater distance your head would travel during an impact, and the more force would be generated. Those three inches can add to the whiplash effect.

Also, Manning notes, people sitting behind a seat that is reclined or unlocked will not be able to brace properly. And yes, there are proper ways of bracing. In the late 1980s the FAA researched various ways to prepare the body for impact, using test dummies.

Before an airliner is certified, the manufacturer has to demonstrate that it can be evacuated quickly. For this reason, Section 121.311(d) of the Federal Aviation Regulations requires seat backs that can be locked into position. Having passengers weave around jutting seats as they shimmy into the aisle simply wouldn't do.

"Since most accidents occur during takeoff and landing, it is for the safety of everyone onboard the aircraft to have all seats in their upright and locked position," says Manning.

For more details: http://www.airspacemag.com/need-to-know/NEED-seatbacks.html?c=y&page=1

Board Games Invention

The oldest board game in the world is Senet appeared in ancient Egypt in 3300 b.c. Even King Tut had one. He liked it so much he was buried with it.

The oldest set of board gaming equipment ever found is The Royal Game of Ur, which was invented more than 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, the site of present-day Iraq. It was a “race” game where the first player to complete the course was the winner. Moves were governed by throwing dice-like objects. Archaeologists believe it is the forerunner of backgammon.

Parcheesi, the original male chauvinist game, was created in the 1500s in India by Akbar the Great. It was played in the palace courtyard where Akbar would sit in the middle with slave girls dressed in different colors as game pawns.

The first American board game, “The Mansion of Happiness,” was produced in 1843. Its theme was Victorian: players tried to avoid Passion, Idleness, Cruelty, Immodesty, and Ingratitude. Drunkenness was punished by a trip to the stocks.

In 1860, Milton Bradley bought a lithographic press and began printing board games. His first game was called “The Checkered Game of Life.” The object was to land on the "good" spaces and collect 100 points. A player could gain fifty points toward this goal by reaching "Happy Old Age" in the far corner, opposite "Infancy" where one began. The game board was essentially a modified checkerboard.

In 1885, Mark Twain designed and patented a game intended to help people keep historical facts straight. He called it “Mark Twain’s Memory Builder: A Game for Acquiring and Retaining All Sorts of Facts and Dates. In the introduction to the rules he wrote, “Many public school children seem to know only two dates - 1492 and 4th of July but as a rule they don’t know what happened on either occasion. It is because they have not had a chance to play this game.

Monopoly was invented by Charles B. Darrow during the Depression in 1934 and at first, the game was rejected by the Parker Brothers due 52 design errors. In its first year, 1935, game was the best-selling game in America. Standard Monopoly bank starts with $15,140 and it is estimated that Monopoly has been sold 250 million times through out the world. Mr. Monopoly is the name of the Monopoly® man.

Source: http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/en_US/

Cheerleader Disabled After Flu Shot

A 25-year-old woman Desiree Jennings in Ashburn, Virginia has come down with a severe debilitating neurological disorder days after receiving a seasonal flu vaccination.

For more details: desireejennings.com

Support her in Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Desiree-Jennings/163372563506

Something About The King Of Pop

Jackson's oxygen chamber.

For the purposes of beauty and longevity, Michael Jackson used to sleep in an oxygen chamber.

Jackson and an ancient Egyptian sculpture.

A netizen called 'mandalariangirl' speculated that Michael Jackson got some of his plastic surgery ideas from this ancient Egyptian sculpture.

Jackson's unique anti-gravity boots.

Michael Jackson invented anti-gravity boots and patented the invention with the US Patent Number 5255452. These unique boots allow wearers to tilt so far forward that they appear to defy gravity.

Jackson's animal friend – a chimpanzee named "Bubbles".

Jackson regarded "Bubbles" as a son. Aside from teaching the chimp basic human behavior, Jackson also taught "Bubbles" to dance the "moonwalk." It was said that "Bubbles" also learned to fold a bed for Jackson.

Jackson suffered from a rare genetic disease.

Michael Jackson suffered from a rare genetic disease known as Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (a condition that raises your risk for certain types of lung disease, especially if you smoke), which is one of around 8000 rare diseases worldwide.

"Billie Jean" was the first MTV video to feature a black artist.

"Billie Jean" was the most successful single from Jackson's "Thriller" album.

Jackson's video game.

Japanese firm Sega Corporation specially developed a video game for Michael Jackson called "Michael Jackson's Moonwalker."

Jackson's Thriller zombie vinyl figure.

In many respects, the "king of pop" is considered to be quite eccentric.

The world's largest Thriller group dance.

In 2008, 4000 people from all over the world donned white gloves and zombie make-up to celebrate Michael Jackson's Thriller dance. The activity involved 4177 people in 72 cities in 10 countries performing a synchronized zombie dance.

Jackson's Nintendo game "Punch-Out".

Mike L. Mayfield created a Nintendo game called "Punch-Out" which stars an awesome and active Michael Jackson.

Internet will be boring without them

Google, the Internet search company founded in September 1998. by Larry Page & Sergey Brin, got it's name from the word Googol, which represents number 1 followed with hundred zeros after it.

Facebook was originally named TheFaceBook and it was developed by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. The first use of the FaceBook was on the Harvard campus and it was limited only to Harvard students. Soon the FaceBook spread like wild fire around the other major U.S. Universities. Mark Zuckerberg dropped the Harvard and pursued his facebook dream to become one of the 4th most-trafficked websites in the world with more than 90 million active users. The FaceBook website is built on PHP-MySQL technology and it is probably the most popular PHP website ever built. Interesting fact is that the facebook.com domain was purchased for $200,000 and FaceBook has more than 24 million photos uploaded daily.

Yahoo the complex internet organism has complicated name. Word "Yahoo" is shortcut for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". It was coined by PhD candidates at Stanford University, David Filo and Jerry Yang.


Twitter is a micro-blogging social network service which allows users to share not-so-important things in their life by answering a simple question: "What are you doing?" Answers to this question are organized in a short messages called Tweets, length is limited to 140 characters. The good thing about Twitter, there is no "noise" created by boring people since "friendships" are not mutual - you can "follow" interesting people while they don't have to follow you. In February 2009, Twitter had a monthly growth (of users) of over 1300 percent - several times more than Facebook. Twitter made huge success from the mobile device users (in 2009 there was 735,000 unique mobile visitors).

Source: interestingfacts.org


YouTube was founded in the early months of 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. According to Chad and Steve, the developed the idea for YouTube after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Steve's apartment. Jawed did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as subsidiary of Google.

Space hotel to open in 2012

A company behind plans to open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012 despite critics questioning the investment and time frame for the multi-billion dollar project.

The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost $4.4 million for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island.

During their stay, guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and travel around the world every 80 minutes. They would wear Velcro suits so they can crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.

For more details: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33579859/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Gay Men Killed in Iraq

A 67-page report by the Human Rights Watch in Beirut details a shocking trend moving across Iraq. Gay men are being rounded up, tortured and killed while the government stands by.

Men are being targeted by militias for their appearance, such as the length of their hair and the fit of their clothes. Their corpses are dumped in the garbage or hung on the street as a warning.

The killing is most intense in Baghdad, but it is also occurring in other parts of Iraq. Without fear of punishment, the killers invade homes, abducting men suspected of homosexuality. The men are interrogated and brutalized, their mutilated bodies left in the neighborhood the next day.

The failure of authorities to investigate makes reliable figures on how many have been killed unattainable, although the report claims that “hundreds” may have been killed. Despite pleas from gay activists for the Obama administration to step in and “save” Iraqi and *Iranian homosexuals, there is little that can be done.

“Given that one of the stereotypes of LGBT folk in Iraq is that they’re a product of Western influence, calls for the U.S. to somehow take them under its real or rhetorical wing are not likely to be very productive in terms of their safety,” says the author of the report, Scott Long.

Source: http://renovomedia.com/world-news/gay-men-being-tortured-and-killed-in-iraq/

Numbers and Its Origin

The numbers that we use today are made up of algorithms (1, 2, 3, 4, etc…) which are called Arabic algorithms in order to distinguish them from the roman algorithms (I, II, III, IV, etc…).

The Arabs popularized these algorithms, but their origin goes way back to the Phoenician merchants that used them to count and do their commercial accountability.

Have you ever asked the question why 1 is “one”, 2 is “two”, 3 is “three”…..?

What is the logic that exists in the Arabic algorithms? The answer is there are angles!

Take a look at these algorithms written in their primitive form and check it up!

And the most interesting and intelligent of all...