The XO Directory

Meet Yoda, the cat with four ears. This cat, adopted by Valerie and Ted Rock two years ago, was named after Yoda of Starwars movie.

'We decided to name him Yoda. I understand the Star Wars character was based on George Lucas' cat.'

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A 27- year-old Egyptian woman named Ghazala Khamis gives birth to Septuplets or seven babies via Ceasarean section. The babies, four boys and three girls are now in stable condition. Ghazala who has three daughters, took fertility drugs in order to have a son. Lucky for the parents because Egypt's health minister will shoulder the milk and diapers of the seven babies for two years.

"This is a very rare pregnancy — something I have never witnessed over my past 33 years in this profession," Darwish told The Associated Press by phone from the hospital.

Darwish decided to carry out the Caesarean section at the end of Khamis' eighth month of pregnancy due to the pressure on her kidneys. He said Khamis, who already has three daughters, took fertility drugs in an effort to have a son.

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A Japanese grapes called "Ruby Roman" was sold for $900 a bunch. The said grapes has the same size of pingpong ball each.

On August 11, 2008, in Ishikawa Prefecture Japan, a bunch of “Ruby Roman” grapes were auctioned and purchased by a restaurant owner for a record high of 100,000 yen (around $910).

The bunch had about 35 grapes on it, costing around $26 per grape, and each one was as big as a ping pong ball.

The other bunches sold for average of 27,000 yen (around $245).

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A premature 610-gram baby comes back to life after it was pronounced dead and was put into a freezer for five hours. Premature infants of this weight and age have only 10 percent survival.

The father, Ali Majdub, told Channel 2 that his wife realized the child was alive after asking to see her dead daughter one last time.

"When we unwrapped the baby to see her, she realized it was moving. I began screaming and ran with it toward the doctors," he said.

She was then rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit,
where doctors are fighting for her life.

"I was in shock," the mother told Channel 2 last night. "I thought I wasn't hearing it right when they said she was still alive."

Dr. Moshe Daniel, the hospital's deputy director, said that in his 35 years as a physician, he had "never heard of such a case. It was like a medical miracle."

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This water fountain in Canal City in Hakata, Japan creates amazing text, images and animation. A very nice and innovative attraction.



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A Bigfoot that was found in North Georgia is gaining so much attention since yesterday when the two Bigfoot hunters who claims to have discovered the body made a press conference about their latest discovery. The two hunters presented photos and DNA samples of the Bigfoot but many wants to see the real body which is, according to the hunters, in a freezer somewhere. Many are speculating this is another big hoax but the two hunters are claiming otherwise.

"We were not looking for Bigfoot. ... We wouldn't know what we were doing if we did," said Whitton, a police officer on leave after being shot in the hand while making an arrest. "I didn't believe in Bigfoot at the time. ... But you've got to come to terms with it and realize you've got something special. And that's what it was."

The men say they were hiking in early June when they discovered the body of a 7-foot-7, 500-pound half-ape, half-human creature near a stream. They also claim to have spotted about three similar living creatures -- and showed reporters video stills of what they say is one of those creatures shadowing them through the woods.

The announcement, which the men first made on the Internet radio show "Squatch Detective" several weeks ago, has been greeted with healthy skepticism, even among some Bigfoot enthusiasts.

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Proposal 2.0: Marry Me, Leslie is a geek idea of Michael Weiss-Malik to propose marriage to his longtime girlfriend, Leslie, on Google Streetview. It went live on Google Maps on August 5, 2008.


View Larger Map

Link. See also MarryMeLeslie.com

Scientist have recently found that the songbirds' throat muscles is the world's fastest muscle. It can move a hundred times faster than the blink of an eye.

"[Pigeons] have really boring, slow songs, and it made me wonder what the muscles in songbirds were like, so I decided to find out."

What Elemans and colleagues discovered is that zebra finches and European starlings can change their tunes at frequencies as high as 250 hertz via direct muscle control.

This means that they are moving their muscles a hundred times faster than a blink of the human eye.

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Wanna eat all you can and stay fit? Be a world class Olympian like Michael Phelps. He eats a whooping 12,000 calories a day or 4,000 calories every meal. That's six times than the average man of his age and size suggested calorie intake of 2,000 calories. Apparently, his calorie intake is being washed away by his training of five hour a day, six time a week regimen.

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Link. (Image Source)

Update: Michael Phelps won his 8th Olympic gold medal, breaking the record of Mark Spitz's who won seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. He now have a total of thirteen Olympic gold medals from three Olympics Games.

Michael Phelps is now the winningest Olympian ever with eleven Olympic gold medal. He has gone were all Olympians has never been before by capturing his 10th and 11th gold medal after winning the 200-meter butterfly and the 4x200 freestyle relay which both broke the previous records. He has now a total of five gold medal in this Summer Olympics in China. At 23 years old, you bet he is far from retiring from the Olympics.

“I’m almost kind of at a loss for words,” Phelps said. “Growing up, I always wanted to be an Olympian. Now to be the most decorated Olympian of all time, it just sounds weird saying it. I just have absolutely nothing to say. I’m speechless.

“It’s a pretty cool title, I guess you could say.”

Link. See also MichaelPhelps.com (Image Source)

Once considered the world's heaviest living man, Manuel Uribe finally got his first outing in five years. He was forklifted in his specially designed bed to a platform truck to a lake in Mexico. He now weighs 700 pounds after losing more than 500 pounds through dieting and bed exercise.

Once considered the world's fattest man when his weight hit over half a ton, more than two years of steady dieting had helped Uribe drop to about 700 pounds as of June - 550 pounds less than his former Guinness record weight of 1,235 pounds. He did not say what his current weight is.

While somewhat bothered by the summer heat, Uribe appeared to enjoy Sunday's outing. He is still unable to walk, and his last planned outing in March was aborted after the platform carrying his bed got stuck under an overpass.

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One question, is there a war between Russia and US now? (just asking :))

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Google's Streetview camera has really been into places, and it has captured a wide array of images. This time, it's a house on fire. We're wondering if the crew called the 911.

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The Slightest Touch device promise one thing - Orgasms "at the touch of a button". According to the makers, this device can give women longer, better and more intense orgasms. And the more interesting is, it can give orgasm without touching a woman's genital just by stimulating the body's sexual nerve pathway.

Women start by drinking an electrolyte sports drink 20 minutes before using the device.

They then apply two white electrode pads inside their ankles.

These pads are connected to the Slightest Touch device, which is about the size of a personal stereo.

"The Slightest Touch does not provide an orgasm," said Cherisse Davidson, the company's director of customer support.

"It gently stimulates the sexual nerve pathways taking the woman to a pre-orgasmic plateau where she dangles on the edge of orgasm for as long as she wants.

"From there, gentle stimulation can then effect the orgasm."

BBC News Online has been unable to get independent scientific verification that the product works.

But Ms Davidson, who first tested the device three years ago, insists it is effective.

"It can be of great benefit to many women," she told BBC News Online.

"I've been using mine for three years and I just love it."

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This video shows a cute two-faced kitten was born In Ohio. So small that it's whole body can fit in one hand.



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The Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel is truly a marvelous piece of engineering. This underwater bridge between Sweden and Denmark connects connects Suffolk, VA and Newport News, VA. The submerged portion of the bridge serves as ships canal.

Link. More pictures here.

Now I know why Google is number one. It's because Yahoo advertise with them. :)

Invented by Swedish inventor Jan von Heland, Waboba ball, the ball that bounces on water, is now becoming popular around the world after videos of it were posted in YouTube.

This ball is made of a combination of plastics with lycra coating. It has the same density as water and floats when at rest. Wabobal ball which is said to have a consistency of breast implant, took the inventor several years to perfect and now being sold around the world after debuting in the beaches of Australia.

"I first got the idea when I was throwing a frisbee upside down on the water trying to get it to bounce,” he said.

"I thought it would be good to get something that used the water to bounce off and began to experiment.”

He added: "It has been very successful and we sell the balls all over the world - Australia is our biggest market.

"It seems a bit odd that a Swede should invent this because it is best for a hot climate where people are in the sea and in swimming pools all the time."

Link. See also Waboba.com

The giant Palm Salamander's tongue is the world's most explosive muscle. This Central American reptile's tongue muscles has explosive tongue thrust that releases over 18,000 watts of power per kilogram of muscle. Enough to catch even the most elusive insect.

Stephen Deban of the University of South Florida in Tampa said the secret to the tiny salamander's strength lies in its "ballistic" tongue-firing mechanism.

His team used high-speed video and implanted electrodes to study the prey-catching behavior of several related salamander species.

Much like an arrow shot from a bow, Deban said, the giant palm salamander's bony tongue is launched with an initial burst of energy and flies forward under its own momentum.

The "bow" is provided by elastic fibers in the salamander's mouth that stretch to store muscular energy and then release it all at once.

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Where is Matt Video - a traveling man's dancing video. Matt Harding, travels around the world just to dance. He has been to 84 countries (and more to come) just to dance - some with local people and some on his own. Matt is now an internet celebrity because of his dancing videos. His YouTube videos is watched by millions of viewers worldwide. The video below is has been watched eight million times and counting.



Link. WhereTheHellisMatt.com