Triple rainbows do exist (and so do quadruples!)

Few people have ever claimed to see three rainbows arcing through the sky at once. In fact, scientific reports of these phenomena, called tertiary rainbows, were so rare -- only five in 250 years -- that until now many scientists believed sightings were as fanciful as Leprechaun's gold at a rainbow's end. These legendary optical rarities, caused by three reflections of each light ray within a raindrop, have finally been confirmed, thanks to photographic perseverance and a new meteorological model that provides the scientific underpinnings to find them.

Image: Double rainbow with reflected rainbow, as seen from Stuart Island on July 22, 2012. (Photo: Chris Teren)

Via: sciencedaily.com; komonews.com

An amazing story of a blind man who taught himself to see!

Daniel Kish who has been sightless since he was a year old. Yet he can mountain bike. And navigate the wilderness alone. And recognize a building as far away as 1,000 feet. How? The same way bats can see in the dark.

Kish was born with an aggressive form of cancer called retinoblastoma, which attacks the retinas. To save his life, both of his eyes were removed by the time he was 13 months old. Since his infancy – Kish is now 44 – he has been adapting to his blindness in such remarkable ways that some people have wondered if he's playing a grand practical joke. But Kish is completely blind.

Kish learned echolocation and trained himself in such a precised manner that he can hear the slight echoes and interpret their meaning. Daniel Kish use echolocation just like Bats and Beluga whales do. He is so accomplished at echolocation that he's able to pedal his mountain bike through streets heavy with traffic and on precipitous dirt trails. He climbs trees. He camps out, by himself, deep in the wilderness. He's lived for weeks at a time in a tiny cabin a two-mile hike from the nearest road. He travels around the globe. He's a skilled cook, an avid swimmer, a fluid dance partner.

Kish has given a name to what he does – he calls it "FlashSonar" – but it's more commonly known by its scientific term, echolocation.

Kish's work has inspired a number of scientific studies related to human echolocation. In a 2009 study at the University of Alcalá in Madrid, ten sighted subjects were taught basic navigation skills within a few days. The study aimed to analyze various sounds which can be used to echo-locate and evaluate which were most effective. In another study, MRI brain scans were taken of Kish and another echolocation expert to identify the parts of the brain involved in echolocation, with readings suggesting "that brain structures that process visual information in sighted people process echo information in blind echolocation experts."

George Lippert - The man with three legs and two hearts.

He was born in Germany in 1844. In addition to being born with three legs, he was also born with two functioning hearts although that condition was unknown until is autopsy in 1906.

His third leg was fully formed and even possessed an extra toe, giving Lippert a total of sixteen. The leg was not functional. Lippert claimed that his leg had been fully functional until it sustained a fracture. Whether this is a fact or not remains a mystery, but during his career the leg hung motionless.

Early in his career George was billed as the ‘only Three Legged Man on Earth’ and he proved to be quite an attraction. Lippert even worked an exhibit with P. T. Barnum. However evidence indicates that he may not have been the easiest person to do business with. The pitch card above shows only a painting of Lippert and remains the only pitch card ever used by Lippert. Considering that his career spanned decades and coincided with a great boom in sideshow photography, this is highly unusual and raises several red flags.

http://thehumanmarvels.com/62/george-lippert-three-legs-two-hearts/parasitic-twins

DISCLAIMER: I don't own this article.

THE ORIGIN OF SIDEBURNS

Sideburns, sideboards, or side whiskers are patches of facial hair grown on the sides of the face, extending from the hairline to below the ears and worn with an unbearded chin. The term sideburns is a 19th-century corruption of the original burnsides, named after American Civil War general AMBROSE BURNSIDE, a man known for his unusual facial hairstyle that connected thick sideburns by way of a moustache, but left the chin clean-shaven. "Burnsides" became "sideburns" because of their location on the face and for the somewhat incompetent Burnside's tendency to "get things the wrong way 'round'".

Ambrose Everett Burnside (May 23, 1824 – September 13, 1881) was an American soldier, railroad executive, inventor, industrialist, and politician from Rhode Island, serving as governor and a U.S. Senator. As a Union Army general in the American Civil War, he conducted successful campaigns in North Carolina and East Tennessee but was defeated in the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg and Battle of the Crater.

- The Muthaphukkin' Pooch (@StunningFactsPH)

Disclaimer: I don't own this article.

YANGTZE RIVER TURNS RED AND TURNS UP A MYSTERY

For a river known as the "golden watercourse," red is a strange color to see.

Yet that's the shade turning up in the Yangtze River and officials have no idea why.

The red began appearing in the Yangtze, the longest and largest river in China and the third longest river in the world, yesterday near the city of Chongquing, where the Yangtze connects to the Jialin River.

The Yangtze, called "golden" because of the heavy rainfall it receives year-round, runs through Chongqing, Southwest China's largest industrial and commercial center, also known as the "mountain city" because of the hills and peaks upon which its many buildings and factories stand.

The red color stopped some residents in their tracks. They put water from the river in bottles to save it. Fishermen and other workers who rely on the river for income kept going about their business, according to the UK's Daily Mail.

While the river's red coloring was most pronounced near Chongqing it was also reported at several other points.

Officials are reportedly investigating the cause. via ABC NEWS

There is no Al Qaeda?

Stories on al Qaeda have filled the pages of many newspapers in recent years, yet there are those who say the group doesn't exist at all. They're an invention of the US Government designed to keep the population frightened, and ensure they accept higher military spending, suggest some. But where's the evidence to support their claims?

The most high-level source used to support the "al Qaeda doesn't exist" claims comes from former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. Or at least that’s what you might be told.

Shortly before his untimely death, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that "Al Qaeda" is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=3836
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1291

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west. The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html

Bill Gates confesses Control-Alt-Delete was a mistake

Bill Gates is seldomly prone to admitting blunders, but when it comes to the awkward three-finger login for Windows PC, he couldn’t have said it more clearly: "it was a mistake."

 

During a question-and-answer session at Harvard University over the weekend, Gates explained the history.

 

"Basically because when you turn your computer on, you’re going to see some screens and eventually type your password in, you want to have something you do with the keyboard that is signaling to a very low level of the software — actually hard-coded in the hardware — that it really is bringing in the operating system you expect," he said. "Instead of just a funny piece of software that puts up a screen that looks like your login screen and listens to your password and is able to do that."

 

"So we could have had a single button, but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn’t want to give us our single button, and so we programmed at a low level ... it was a mistake."

 

Although not everyone agrees it was bad thing; PCWorld notes that Control-Alt-Delete was the best mistake to happen to PCs. Why? "Because, as insecure as some perceive the Windows operating system to be, it could have been a thousand times worse if there were no keyboard interaction required to log on."