The XO Directory

At more than 7 feet tall when standing on his hind legs, Gibson is to date the world's tallest living dog as certified by the Guiness Book of World Records. This Great Dane breed is owned by Sandy Hall of Grass Valley, California, USA. Link

Last 3rd of December, CNN listed the top ten great love affairs in history. Below is the list with Antony and Cleopatra on top.

1. Antony and Cleopatra
2. Catherine the Great and Grigory Potemkin
3. Napoleon and Josephine
4. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
5. Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra Federovna
6. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. and Anne Spencer Morrow
7. (Prince) Edward and Wallis Simpson
8. Julius Waties Waring and Elizabeth Avery Waring
9. Juan Domingo Perón and Maria Eva Duarte (Evita)
10. Harry Tyson Moore and Harriette Simms Moore

Link. ( image source)

At 3,106.75 carats (621.35 g), the Cullinan Diamond is the largest gem-quality diamond ever found. It was found by Frederick Wells, surface manager of the Premier Diamond Mining Company in Cullinan, Gauteng, South Africa, on January 26, 1905. It was named after Sir Thomas Cullinan, the owner of the diamond mine. The picture above shows the Cullinan diamond after it was cut into 9 pieces. Link

See also: The Cullinan

A 77-year-old man, Robert Schoff, was trying to find a clog of his septic tank when he lost his balance and stuck upside down, with his head inside and his feet kicking in the air above. It was an hour before his wife, Toni, walked by a window and saw his feet in the air and called 911.

"It wasn't good, I'll tell you what," Schoff said Tuesday. "It was the worst Christmas Eve I've ever had."

Link

While sharing Christmas cracker with her family, Betty Lawrence found a dead and decaying mouse in it - far from the standard bad jokes, paper hats and proverbs that comes with it.

"I had said to my granddaughter, 'What's that smell?' and we couldn't work it out until we pulled the cracker," Lawrence said.

"My niece started pulling it out, thinking it was a soft toy," she said, adding the discovery wrecked the festivities. "It ruined my appetite for the rest of the day."

Link

These previously-stray dogs, Buckshot, Katie and Obu-Jet, are extremely lucky to have found an owner like Ken Kemper who leaves to them and $800,000 estate.

The dogs — named Buckshot, Katie and Obu-Jet — inherited $400,000 and a house in Hagerstown with the death last year of owner Ken Kemper. Altogether, their estate is worth about $800,000.

The beagle and two Labrador mixes were strays when Kemper adopted them. They now live at their house with caretaker Roy Grady.

They might not be aware of their wealth, but they do know that on one night a week Grady treats them to spaghetti dinner, with meatballs and garlic bread.

"They love it," he said. "They know when it's coming on Friday, too. They have that time clock."

Link

(Above is a replica of the first ice skate) According to recent study, Finns were the one who invented the first ice skate more than 5,000 years ago. This was their method of transport to make getting across frozen lakes less of a struggle. The primitive skates have blades made from bone. With this tool, researchers calculated that it reduced energy expenditure by 10 per cent.

"In central and northern Europe 5,000 years ago people struggled to survive the severe winter conditions and it seems unlikely that ice skating developed as a hobby," said Dr Formenti.

"As happened later with skis and bicycles, I am convinced that we first made ice stakes to limit the energy required for our daily journeys."

Link

While the fat-tailed scorpions (the common name given to scorpions of the genus Androctonus) is not the most venomous scorpion, it is the deadliest. Causing several deaths per year. Their venom contains powerful neurotoxins and is especially potent. These moderate sized scorpion, attaining lengths of 10 cm, are found throughout the semi-arid and arid regions of the Middle-East and Africa. Link

No. 5, 1948, an abstract painting by American painter Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) was done on a 8 x 4 feet sheet of fiberboard, with thick amounts of brown and yellow paint drizzled on top of it, forming a nest-like appearance. It was sold to a David Geffen and then allegedly to David Martinez in 2006 in a private sale for a record of $140 million. Link

This extraordinary swiss army knife which features 85 tools in one and weighing almost 3 pounds, is the World's Largest Swiss Army Knife. It was created by Wenger to celebrate 100 years of innovation. It can be used in over 100 functions. Link

A rare "Jenny" stamp, one of the most famously flawed stamps in U.S. history was sold for $825,000 to man from New York. This rare 1918 24-cent stamp depicts an upside-down Curtis JN-4 biplane known as "Jenny", a World War I training aircraft. Link

Teagan Gislason, a two year-old girl from Minnesota, USA, made a miraculous recovery after accidentally stabbing herself in the eye with a screwdriver. The X-ray shows the screwdriver lodged in her skull. She was playing during a church service when she found a screwdriver, tripped and lodged it in her skull. The screwdriver were removed by doctors without surgery.

"She's our Christmas miracle," said mother Katie Gislason, who along with her husband has set up an appeal fund to help pay for Teagan's medical bills.

Doctors said neither Teagon's eye nor her brain was damaged. But they said it could have been a much different story if the screwdriver had gone into her head just one inch lower.

Link

At 7 feet 8 inches, De-Fen Yao, is considered the world's tallest woman. Her abnormal growth was due to Acromegaly, a disease resulting from a tumour on the pituitary gland causing it to pump out excess growth hormone, that inflicted her when she was 15 years old. Link

See also: Tallest Women, The Biggest Wish of Asia's Tallest Woman

With an approximate weight of five million trillion trillion pounds, astronomers discovered the largest diamond of all times, not on earth but in space. It is virtually an enormous chunk of crystallized carbon with a diameter of 4,000 kilometers and is located at a distance of 50 light years from Earth, in the Constellation Centaurus. Named Lucy or BPM 37093, this space diamond is actually a crystallized hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies.

Scientists believe that the diamond is the heart of an extinct star that used to shine like the Sun. Astronomers have already dubbed the space diamond as Lucy in a tribute to the Beatles song ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.’

"You would need a jeweler's loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond!" says astronomer Travis Metcalfe (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who leads a team of researchers that discovered the giant gem.

Link

An earthquake with a magnitude of 8.1 that struck the Solomon Islands lifted the island of Ranongga 10 feet (three meters) above sea water. It exposed the island's pristine coral reefs. In some places in the Solomons, the beaches resemble a barren moonscape with once vibrant corals bleaching under the sun.

"These are not unusual occurrences for an earthquake of this magnitude," said Rick MacPherson of the Coral Reef Alliance in San Francisco, California. "During the Asian tsunami two years ago, Banda Aceh [in Indonesia], stretching down almost the extent of the peninsula, experienced similar uplift."

Link

According to a new study at the University of California, squirrels use "snake perfume" to fool it's snake predators. The video stills above show a ground squirrel chewing on a rattlesnake's shed skin and then licking its body to apply the masticated mush. The said act persuades snakes that another snake is in the area and not a squirrel. This behavior is part of a host of tricks the squirrels have evolved to use to avoid predation.

"To our knowledge this is the first case where [this idea] has been tested systematically and shown to have an anti-predator function—protecting the squirrel from rattlesnake predation," said study lead author Barbara Clucas.

Link

Lane Jensen, a devotee of body art, decided to have the buxom lady on his shin implanted with silicone to make it appear it to have breasts. Brian Decker, owner of the firm Pure Body Arts, carried out the strange surgery which lasted just 45 minutes - and left Lane feeling nothing more than "a small bruise", but delighted with his new breasts. Link

With a space less than half the size of grain of sugar, Israeli scientists successfully inscribed the entire Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible by blasting tiny particles called gallium ions. The nanotechnology experts at the Technion institute in Haifa say the text measures less than 0.5 square millimeter (0.01 square inch) surface. They chose the Jewish Bible to highlight how vast quantities of information can be stored in minimum amounts of space.

"It took us about an hour to etch the 300,000 words of the Bible onto a tiny silicon surface," Ohad Zohar, the university's scientific adviser for educational programs, told the Associated Press.

Link

For $7.98 million US dollars, this rare and flawless blue diamond is the world's most expensive diamond. At $926,000 per carat, this 6.04 carats gem, sparkles with an unusual blue hue. It was sold at the Sotheby's auction in Hong Kong. Link

During a live broadcast, a minivan crashes into glass exterior wall of ABC studios. The crash startled the anchorman, Ravi Baichwal, who is in the act of delivering the 10 p.m. news and jumped and shouted "ho" as soon as he heard the crash. Link

At $41,468 dollars, this pure platinum Gundam, is currently Japan's most expensive toy. It is made by Japan's Ginza Tanaka and toymaker Bandai Co. It weighs in at 1,400 grams (45oz) and stands 13cm (5") tall. Link

Paul Karason, the Blue Man from Oregon, moved to California in search of community acceptance. His discoloration is caused by colloidal silver which he rubbed on his face to treat a skin problem and drank to cure some of his ailments.

"The change was so gradual that I didn't perceive it and for people around me, likewise," Karason said. "It was just so gradual that no one really noticed. It wasn't until a friend that I hadn't seen in several months came by my parents' place to see me and he asked me 'what did you do?'"

Link

This Christmas eve, Mars will be unusually bright and the moon will be shining 98 percent full. The moon will be this bright again after 16 years. Mar's exceptional brightness is due to it reaching an "opposition", which means it is exactly lined up with the Sun and Earth. "Opposition" also means Mars is fairly near, and its full face is lit up when viewed from Earth.

"If you have a pair of binoculars around you might want to turn them towards the heavens," suggests astronomy educator Judy Stanley of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico.

Link

After 26 months of dieting, training and friendship David Smith looses 400 pounds with the help of an unlikely friend in the person of Chris Powell, a fitness correspondent for Good Morning Arizona, a local news broadcast on KTVK in Phoenix. He also undergone skin surgeries to get rid of his loose skins and dental works and other cosmetic surgeries to improve his looks. Link

The ILOVEYOU worm, also known as VBS/Loveletter and Love Bug worm is considered the world's most damaging computer worm yet. It is written in VBScript by a Filipino college student. It began in the Philippines on May 4, 2000, and spread across the world in one day, infecting 10 percent of all computers connected to the Internet and causing about $5.5 billion in damage. Most large corporations, including the Pentagon, CIA, and the British Parliament shut down their e-mail systems to get rid of the worm. Link

Phillips designed the Bubelle Dress, the dress that changes color to reflect the wearer's mood. It is made up of two layers, the inner layer contains biometric sensors that pick up a person's emotions and projects them in colors onto the second layer, the outer textile.

Ingrid Bal from Philip's Design said: "You could programme the material so that it turned red if you were angry or stressed, or green when you're calm."

Link

A review of evidence by US researchers surrounding seven commonly-hold medical beliefs suggests they are actually "medical myths". Two U.S. researchers searched the archives for evidence to support them, but they found nothing. Some are utterly untrue, while others have no evidential proof, the British Medical Journal reports.

The Seven Medical Myths Are:
1. Drink eight glasses of water daily
2. Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
3. Shaving makes hair grow back faster or coarser
4. Eating turkey makes you drowsy
5. We use only 10 percent of our brains
6. Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
7. Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals

Link

A rare, prehistoric shark was caught on camera last January 21, 2007. Frilled sharks, named after it's frilled gills, generally remain thousands of feet beneath the water's surface. This serpentine specimen may look like a large eel, but its six slitlike gills help mark it as a cousin of the great white, the hammerhead, and other sharks. With a mouthful of three-pointed teeth, the frilled shark may be a fearsome hunter, but it's considered harmless to humans as it's main diet is deep sea squids and other sharks.

"We think it may have come to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters," a park official told the Reuters news service. But the truth may never be known, since the "living fossil" died hours after it was caught.

Link

The Yalos Diamond from Italian outfit Keymat Industrie is considered the world's most expensive TV yet. This diamond-encrusted 40-inch TV set is $130,000 in prize. Embedded in the piano-black bezel are 160 diamonds, and the stand is made of white gold. Link

Jennifer Cannon and Doy Nichols of Lexington, Kentukcy married in the Charmin Restrooms, a free public restroom facility in Times Square, New York City. This extraordinary wedding was part of Charmin's 2007 Wedding Dress Contest. Jennifer wore the winning dress by designer Hanah Kim, fashioned from glue, tape and Charmin Ultra Soft and Ultra Strong toilet tissue. The wedding ceremony, attended by family and friends. The bride's dress was made from 7 rolls of toilet paper. Link

A mass grave containing more than 1,500 bodies, believed to be of the victims of the bubonic plague, have been discovered on a small island in Italy's Venetian Lagoon while workers were digging the foundation for a new museum. The island is believed to be the world's first quarantine colony intended to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases. This colony was opened during the plague outbreaks that decimated Venice, as well as much of Europe, throughout the 15th and 16th centuries A.D. Link

For the first time in Chongqing in southwestern China, archaeologists unearthed cultural artifacts that believed to date back to the Neolithic period, more than 4,000 years ago. The artifacts which includes several pieces of stone tools, including an axe, a peeling tool, shovels and adzes, a delicate bronze willow sword and a lance with particular "Ba" cultural images, was included in the previously unearthed seven tombs that belong to the Han Dynasty. Link

A rare 710 years old copy of the Magna Carta is one of the most important historical documents that was auctioned at a whopping $21.3 million. This royal document, revered as the birth certificate of freedom, was bought by a Washington businessman who said he was determined to see it remain in the United States, where it has been on display at the National Archives and Records Administration since 1988. Link

Archaeologists have found a bag of tools that were prepared 14,000 years ago, before the end of the last ice age. The said toolkit, one of the most complete and well preserved of its kind, provides an intriguing glimpse of the daily life of a prehistoric hunter-gatherer. It contains the following: a sickle for harvesting wild plants, a cluster of flint spearheads, a flint core for making more spearheads, a cluster of gazelle toe bones, and part of a second bone tool.

"There was a sickle for harvesting wild wheat or barley, a cluster of flint spearheads, a flint core for making more spearheads, some smooth stones (maybe slingshots), a large stone (maybe for striking flint pieces off the flint core), a cluster of gazelle toe bones which were used to make beads, and part of a second bone tool," he said.

Link

In 2005, using CT scans of his mummified remains, forensic scientists and artists were able to complete the first ever facial reconstructions of King Tut. The young pharaoh's reconstructed facial composition turned out to be strikingly similar to ancient portraits of him.

"The shape of the face and skull are remarkably similar to a famous image of Tutankhamun as a child where he was shown as the sun god at dawn rising from a lotus blossom," said Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of the Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Link

The Great Aten Temple at Tell el-Amarna, Middle Egypt was captured by a satellite hovering over Egypt. The images captured pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D. This discovery is a part of a project which aims to map ancient Egypt's archaeological sites before they are destroyed or covered by modern development.

"It is the biggest site discovered so far," said project leader Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "Based on the coins and pottery we found, it appears to be a massive regional center that traded with Greece, Turkey and Libya."

Link

The Aramaic, the ancient Semitic language that Jesus used to preach to the apostles is still spoken in Malula (Ma'aloula, Maloula), a tiny Syrian village, until today. The 5,000 residents of this village, are among the last 18,000 speakers of Aramaic. This language is also spoken in two smaller villages nearby and in isolated communities in Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Link

See also:
Preserving The Language Of Jesus
Fieldwork Report in Maloula/Syria

After returning to college in spring of 2006, Clarence Garrett finally graduated at age 87. He completed course work at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was awarded his bachelor's degree at commencement ceremonies on December 16, 2007, Sunday. He has a 50 years gap between his higher and college education.

"We are not sure if Clarence Garrett is the oldest to ever graduate from UWM, but we do know that there had not been a graduate for some time who was born when the president was Woodrow Wilson," Chancellor Carlos Santiago said.

Link

(Above, Martua Sinaga, a Mammalogist, holds a 3-pound (1.4-kilogram) giant rat.) American and Indonesian scientists discoveries a giant rat and a tiny possum that are believed be a newly found species. The rat and a tiny possum, described as one of the worlds smallest marsupials, were found in Indonesia's Foja Mountains, Conservation International said Monday.

"The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat," said Kristofer Helgen, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, according to CI's press release. "With no fear of humans, it apparently came into the camp several times during the trip."

Link

A new world record is set by four fishermen. With just kayaks and and simple rods, they set out an expedition to shark-infested waters off Alaska to catch sharks. On site, they were surrounded by 200 to 300 salmon sharks which were up to nine feet long and weighed between 400 and 1,000 lbs. They manage to catch four of the sharks with Avet 50 reels and large pieces of salmon as bait.

"We are all experienced anglers and kayakers so either as a whole or individually, we felt confident in our personal abilities and limits," said the captain.

"Our biggest concerns were staying upright in the kayaks and keeping from getting tangled up in the gear and pulled over as well.

"There were so many sharks thrashing around us it was crazy. Even while fighting these fish, others were crashing the surface only feet away."

Link via Hoovaloo

Using landscape and dog photographs, Friederike Range and colleagues from the University of Vienna, Austria, were able to show for the first time that dogs are capable of learning how to classify complex colour photographs and place them into categories in the same way that humans do.

"These results show that the dogs were able to form a concept, that is 'dog', although the experiment cannot tell us whether they recognized the dog pictures as actual dogs," said Dr Range.

"Using touch-screen computers with dogs opens up a whole world of possibilities on how to test the cognitive abilities of dogs."

Link

Anthropologist Henry C. Harpending and his colleagues believe that humans are evolving more rapidly than in the distant past. Their genetic analysis suggests people are evolving more rapidly than in the distant past, with residents of various continents becoming increasingly different from one another.

"Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation," the study says. "The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and disease."

Link

A superglue used by ancient Romans have been discovered by Frank Willer, the Rheinischen Landes Museum's chief restorer. He found traces of the superglue while examining a helmet (above) unearthed in 1986 near the German town of Xanten, on what was once the bed of the Rhine. According to new findings, Roman warriors repaired their battle accessories with a superglue that is still sticking around after 2,000 years, despite long exposure to water, time and air.

"The helmet, which dates from the 1st century B.C., was given to the museum for restoration. I discovered the glue accidentally, while removing a tiny sample of metal from the helmet with a fine saw. The heat from the tool caused the silver laurel leaves on the helmet to peel off, leaving thread-like traces of the glue behind," Willer said.

Link

According to a French architect, Ancient Egyptians built the 480-foot-high (146-meter-high) Great Pyramid of Giza from the inside out. This findings is based on eight years of study of Jean-Pierre Houdin, who has created a three-dimensional computer simulation to present his hypothesis. He says his findings solve the mystery of how the massive monument just outside Cairo was constructed.

The 4,500-year-old tomb of Pharaoh Khufu, he concluded, was built using a ramp that spirals around the pyramid's interior 30 to 45 feet (9 to 14 meters) behind the exterior surface (see image at above).

"I am completely comfortable with this theory," Houdin said in a telephone interview from Paris. He was in the French capital on Friday to show the simulation to 400 spectators wearing 3-D goggles.

Link

Nino Selimaj, owner of six New York City pizza restaurants, offers the world's most expensive pizza as $1000. This gourmet pizza is 12″ with a thin crust, topped with lobster tail, six different types of caviar including salmon roe, creme fraiche (a fancy type of cheese), and chives. Link

(Updated. Thanks to Anonymous for the comment.) Bolivia's Road of Death or the North Yungas Road (also Grove’s Road, Coroico Road, Camino de las Yungas, "El Camino de la Muerte", "Death Road") is considered as the world's most dangerous road in 1995 by the Inter-American Development Bank. The road was built in the 1930s during the Chaco War by Paraguayan prisoners. One estimate is that 200-300 travelers were killed yearly along the road. The road descends from approx. 14,100 ft (4300 m) to 6200 ft (330 m), transitioning quickly from cool altiplano terrain to rain forest as it winds through very steep hillsides and atop cliffs. Link

(Note: Picture above is not the actual card) A Christmas card mailed in 1914 finally arrived to it's intended destination. The postcard featuring a color drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl, dated Dec. 23, 1914, was mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, from her cousins in Alma, Nebraska. Since Ethel Martin is deceased, the post office gave the card to a relative, her sister-in-law Bernice Martin.

It's a mystery where it spent most of the last century, Oberlin Postmaster Steve Schultz said. "It's surprising that it never got thrown away," he said. "How someone found it, I don't know."

Link

Isabelle Dinoire is the recipient of the world's first ever facial transplant. According to her doctor, she can now smile a little. Her case shows that the controversial surgery can work—but it also highlighted the risks involved. Since the transplant, she dealt with complications such as two tissue-rejection episodes, two kidney failures, anemia and high blood pressure.

"Everyone in the world said this should not be done because the world was not ready and the risks were too high," said one plastic surgeon. Dinoire is said to be happy, and unafraid to walk the street. "She now has a human face," said one of her doctors. "If she wanted to kiss someone, she could."

Link

A team from the Gyeongsang National University, led by professor Kong Il-keun, were able to genetically alter a cat. The cloned cat gives off a red fluorescence glow under ultraviolet light. Above, a cloned Turkish Angola kitten gives off a red fluorescence glow while an ordinary one appears to be green. The cloned cat’s genes were modified with a fluorescent protein. Link

The Gold Frog, or Brazilian Psyllophryne Didactyla is the smallest frog in the Southern Hemisphere. The adults measure to only 9.8 millimetres in body length (with legs drawn in). That's about one centimeter or about 3/8 of an inch.

See also the Goliath frog, the world's largest frog specie.

Link

"Mathlete" Alexis Lemaire, a 27-year-old Frenchman, a.k.a. the world's fastest human calculator, has broken his own record for working out a 200-digit number using only his brain. He produced the answer of 2,407,899,893,032,210 in 70.2 seconds, beating his previous record of 72.4 seconds, at London's Science Museum. Link

A German church steeple is now the most lopsided building in the world. It beat the Leaning Tower of Pisa which lean by 3.97 degree. This German church steeple, which leans at 5.19 degree angle, applied in June for the title. Guinness Book of Records confirmed the award after officials measured it. Link

The female Anopheles Mosquito (scientific name: Anopheles Stephensi) is considered the world's deadliest insect. This is because this mosquito is the sole carrier of the Malaria parasite which results to 400–900 million cases of fever and approximately one to three million deaths annually — this represents at least one death every 30 seconds. Source

The poor woman's "horn" in the forehead first appearded in 2003 and have been growing ever since. Doctors speculate that she might be suffering from a hormonal imbalance. Link