The Brachiosaurus is a sauropod or member of the lizard-hipped family, and one of the largest land animals that walked the planet. Its name means ‘arm reptile’ in Greek, so called because the front legs were larger than the rear.

Here are some Brachiosaurus facts:
When it stood, it had a rather giraffe-like stance with its long neck held at an angle of forty-five degrees, at the end of which was a relatively small head. It had large nasal opening suggesting a sharp sense of smell. The brachiosaurus was a herbivore that stood around 40 feet tall at the highest point, was 85 feet long and weighed upto 80 tonnes. With its long neck and fore legs it had an astounding reach with the ability to access the highest trees from which it consumed vast amounts of vegetation off the tops. It had long spatulate teeth that enabled it to masticate tougher plant food than other sauropods of the period. Its short stumpy tail and relatively short hind legs would have placed its centre of gravity too far forward to have allowed the animal to rear up on its hind legs. So paleontologists conclude the animal walked on all fours.
The Brachiosaurus lived from 165 to 145 million years ago during the Jurassic period, and is believed to have been native to the east coast of Africa, more especially Tanzania where complete skeletons were found. Some fossil evidence has also been unearthed in North America, Europe and some parts of Asia but these are restricted to a few teeth or the odd limb.
Source: http://www.dinosaursfaq.com/Dinosaur/Brachiosaurus/Brachiosaurus-Facts.html

The Pinta Island tortoise – Without argument, this turtle is one of the few species of Giant Galapagos tortoises and the rarest animal in the world since there is only one left alive. Lonesome George is the sole surviving member of the Pinta Island race, the giant tortoise being a symbol for the fragility of the Galapagos islands, and a constant reminder for vigilence and conservation of the species. The species was considered extinct until 1971, when a lone example was located by rangers. Since then, the Charles Darwin Research Station has been searching for a female tortoise, even posting a reward of $10,000 to those that find one.

Nazi Germany initiated a strong anti-tobacco movement and led the first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history. Anti-tobacco movements grew in many nations from the beginning of the 20th century, but these had little success, except in Germany, where the campaign was supported by the government after the Nazis came to power. It was the most powerful anti-smoking movement in the world during the 1930s and early 1940s. The National Socialist leadership condemned smoking and several of them openly criticized tobacco consumption. Research on smoking and its effects on health thrived under Nazi rule and was the most important of its type at that time. Adolf Hitler’s personal distaste for tobacco and the Nazi reproductive policies were among the motivating factors behind their campaign against smoking, and this campaign was associated with both antisemitism and racism.

The Nazi anti-tobacco campaign included banning smoking in trams, buses and city trains, promoting health education, limiting cigarette rations in the Wehrmacht, organizing medical lectures for soldiers, and raising the tobacco tax. The National Socialists also imposed restrictions on tobacco advertising and smoking in public spaces, and regulated restaurants and coffeehouses. The anti-tobacco movement did not have much effect in the early years of the Nazi regime and tobacco use increased between 1933 and 1939, but smoking by military personnel declined from 1939 to 1945. Even by the end of the 20th century, the anti-smoking movement in postwar Germany had not attained the influence of the Nazi anti-smoking campaign.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobacco_movement_in_Nazi_Germany

The funny thing is, the funny bone isn’t a bone at all, but a nerve, and hitting it is anything but funny — in fact, it’s painful.

The nerve that is referred to as the funny bone is the ulnar nerve, which extends down the arm, across the elbow, and into the hand. It provides sensation to the little and ring fingers and activates many of the muscles in the hand, according to the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons web site.

“The ulnar nerve happens to be very superficially placed in the back of your elbow,” says Ed Toriello, MD, a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. “At this spot, it lies directly under the skin and runs in a hard, bony groove on its way to your hand.”

Why is hitting it guaranteed to make you cringe with pain, rather than laugh, as its nickname suggests?

“Nerves are very temperamental and sensitive structures,” says Toriello, who is an orthopaedic surgeon in private practice in New York. “For this reason, nerves generally course deep in muscles, where they are protected from direct contact with the things we bump into during our normal course of living. The ulnar nerve at the elbow is an exception, because it lies in a spot that is very vulnerable and protected only by a thin layer of skin.”

When you bump the back of your elbow directly over the ulnar nerve, it’s caught between what you hit and the bony groove, explains Toriello. A painful electrical impulse is discharged from the nerve, which runs through the arm and into the little and ring fingers.

So shouldn’t it be called the painful nerve, instead of the funny bone? One theory is that the name funny bone is a pun on the Latin word humerus, which describes the part of the arm between the shoulder and the elbow, according to the Indiana University School of Medicine web site, Sound Medicine.

Another theory is that the “funny” in funny bone means strange rather than ha-ha.

“My suspicion is that the first person who experienced this sensation when he or she struck their elbow did not find it fun, but rather found it an odd sensation since it didn’t seem to happen when they bumped other parts of their body,” says Toriello. “So I think ‘funny’ in this context really means ‘odd or ‘strange.’”

Source: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=52283

266 babies are born into the world each minute, or about 4.4 babies are born worldwide per second.

Source: http://www.kgbanswers.com/how-many-babies-r-born-per-second/4211026

The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.

It’s the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.

Astronomers have decided to call the star “Lucy” after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

“You would need a jeweller’s loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond,” says astronomer Travis Metcalfe, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the team of researchers that discovered it.

The diamond star completely outclasses the largest diamond on Earth, the 546-carat Golden Jubilee which was cut from a stone brought out of the Premier mine in South Africa.

The huge cosmic diamond – technically known as BPM 37093 – is actually a crystallised white dwarf. A white dwarf is the hot core of a star, left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon.

For more than four decades, astronomers have thought that the interiors of white dwarfs crystallised, but obtaining direct evidence became possible only recently.

The white dwarf is not only radiant but also rings like a gigantic gong, undergoing constant pulsations.

“By measuring those pulsations, we were able to study the hidden interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth.

“We figured out that the carbon interior of this white dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy’s largest diamond,” says Metcalfe.

Astronomers expect our Sun will become a white dwarf when it dies 5 billion years from now. Some two billion years after that, the Sun’s ember core will crystallise as well, leaving a giant diamond in the centre of the solar system.

“Our Sun will become a diamond that truly is forever,” says Metcalfe.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/3492919.stm

12 is the only one-syllable word after the number 10.

The foundational document for Alabama’s government is the Alabama Constitution, which was ratified in 1901. At almost 800 amendments and 310,000 words, it is the world’s longest constitution and is roughly forty times the length of the U.S. Constitution.