Interesting Information

On February 15, 2013, an asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the southern Ural region of Russia and exploded. The event was witnessed by thousands of people and became the largest known airburst since the 1908 Tunguska event. The blast produced a light brighter than the Sun, and the shock wave was felt by people all over the area. The energy of the explosion was equivalent to 20-30 of the atomic bombs used at Hiroshima. The asteroid was not detected by the authorities before the airburst, and the event surprised many people. It wounded 1,500 and damaged over 7,000 buildings. The meteor was caught on tape by multiple sources, which shows a giant fireball in the sky - followed by an enormous explosion of light. It was reported that the meteor made the ground hot, and the city smelled like gunpowder after the explosion. The event was an extremely rare occurrence and the only time in history that a meteor has been known to cause human injury.

To be fair, Hanno has not been completely forgotten; the Carthaginian sea-captain and original “Navigator” is the titular inspiration for a 2008 song. Long before Pytheas journeyed through the Pillars of Hercules and north, Hanno made his way south along the West African coast. Whereas several explorers are notable for their solo efforts, Hanno amazes with the incredible scale of his undertaking. Hanno’s fleet consisted of 60 ships and 30,000 men and women. Hanno wasn’t merely exploring; he was colonizing. And to that end he was successful: the Carthaginians established several lasting towns and trading posts. Unfortunately, dwindling provisions forced Hanno to abandon his attempt at circumnavigating Africa. However, Hanno’s account did leave scholars with several intriguing references to African geography and animals, like the following:

Haptic technology - or force feedback - is not new. If you’ve played a video game with a vibrating controller, you’ve experienced haptic technology - the rumble pack vibrates simultaneous with action in the game, providing a sensation along with the visual image. In some cases, force feedback is used to make you do something specific by creating a force that you naturally try to counter. Think of it like someone pushing you sideways - your body resists and pushes back towards them in an effort to maintain your balance.

Your smartphone is the one thing that never leaves your side because it can do it all. But the best smartphones do everything well. A great handset takes amazing photos, offers a bright and crisp HD screen and has enough speed to help you multitask with ease. There’s also plenty of variety out there when it comes to software and the overall user experience. That’s where we come in. Once you’ve decided on your platform of choice - Android, iOS, Windows Phone or BlackBerry - then it’s time to pick a device. At LAPTOP we test every major smartphone on the market and rate each one based on design, features, performance and battery life to help you make the right call. Here are our top 10 smartphones, ranging from the most sleek and compact handsets to the biggest phablets. Samsung Galaxy S4 The Samsung Galaxy S4 takes Android phones to the next level with an awesome camera, innovative gesture controls and best-in-class multitasking.

Medicine is one of the cornerstones of modern civilization - so much so that we take it for granted. It wasn’t always the case that you could just waltz into a doctor’s office to have them cure what ailed you. In medieval times, for example, things were a lot more dangerous, and a lot stranger. Boar Bile Enemas Enemas in medieval times were performed by devices called clysters. A clyster was a long metal tube with a cup on the end. The tube would be entered into the anus and a medicinal fluid poured into the cup. The fluid would then be introduced into the colon by a series of pumping actions. Although warm soapy water is used for enemas today, things were a little more earthy back then: one of the most common fluids finding its way into a clyster was a concoction of boar’s bile. Even kings were high up on the clyster. King Louis XIV of France is said to have had over 2,000 enemas during his reign - some even administered while he sat on his throne.

Not everyone wants an iPad. In fact, many Apple haters would argue no one needs an iDevice, when there are so many other great options. Happily, if you’re looking for an alternative there truly are plenty of compelling options - many that cost less than Apple’s slates. Google and Amazon offer full-featured slates for US$199. Newcomer Hisense even comes in at a very compelling US$149. Those willing to spend more will find a host of versatile tablets, from models with detachable keyboards to those that offer pen input. There are even kid-friendly specific options for parents who want to raise a tech-savvy child. And while all of those options are Android options, there are Windows 8 tablets hitting the shelves that might worth a second look. Here are our top 10 iPad alternatives. Hisense Sero 7 Pro Hisense Sero 7 Pro features a rear-facing 5-MP camera with a flash and a front-facing 2-MP camera, plus it comes with a microSD card slot for expandable storage up to 32GB. I...

Sunny day for a drive Imagine never having to fill your fuel tank again. With the cost of gas these days, that may sound like wishful thinking. But as solar technology becomes more advanced, that dream could soon become a reality. In fact, vehicles that run entirely on solar power are nothing new; the first solar vehicles were built in the 1950s. Those early models weren't very practical, but modern designs have made impressive progress. Solar milestones have been made for just about every form of transportation that you can imagine. There are solar cars, of course, but there are also solar buses, trains, boats, and even a solar helicopter. Here's our rundown of seven modern solar-powered vehicles.

Money, revenge, pure insanity - these are the main reasons why these women committed their crimes. Some operated alone, and some had accomplices, but they had one thing in common: pure evil. Beverley Allitt Beverley Allitt was born in 1968 and started working as a paediatric nurse in 1991. During a period of 58 days, she murdered four children and attacked another nine, who were lucky enough to survive. From an early age, she showed signs of Münchausen syndrome and later Münchausen by proxy, which may explain her actions. Münchausen is a mental disorder in which a person feigns illness or trauma to attract attention. She was finally arrested and tried at Nottingham Crown Court in 1993, pleading not guilty. She received 13 life sentences for murder and attempted murder.

Les Apaches were a French street gang that operated in turn-of-the-century Paris before the advent of World War I. They were called Apaches because they were so ferocious during attacks that a policeman, upon hearing of their crimes, exclaimed that they were as vicious as Apache warriors. They were stylishly dressed, looking like old-timey French hipsters with fancy, striped shirts and berets, creating their own distinct style that would catch on and end up becoming popular in Bohemian circles. But they weren’t just fashion victims - they could actually fight. They practiced their own

The AC-130 Spectre (that big-ass plane from the Call of Duty games) probably isn’t going to be a new piece of technology to most of the people reading this, due to its aforementioned inclusion in a popular video game series. However, it’s the sheer amount of fire-power this thing possesses, combined with how little any given person can do about it, that we think will be surprising to people. If you’ve played the games, you no doubt know that the AC-130 gunship is able to rain down death from a mile in the sky, literally hitting enemies through windows, and even when they’re within spitting distance of a friendly combatant. Along with this frankly insane amount of firepower it has at its disposal, the AC-130 also packs something colloquially known as “Angel Flares,” a combination of chaff and flares which make the AC-130 all but invincible to all known lock-on technology.

Exotic particles called neutrinos have been caught in the act of shape-shifting, switching from one flavor to another, in a discovery that could help solve the mystery of antimatter. Neutrinos come in three flavors — electron, muon and tau — and have been known to change, or oscillate, between certain flavors. Now, for the first time, scientists can definitively say they've discovered muon neutrinos changing into electron neutrinos. The discovery was made at the T2K neutrino experiment in Japan, where scientists sent a beam of muon neutrinos from the J-PARC laboratory in Tokai Village on the eastern coast of Japan, streaming 183 miles (295 km) away to the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector in the mountains of Japan's northwest.

It's not often that some event comes along to really show humanity its true place in the universe, but two NASA spacecraft have just managed just that. I'm talking, of course, about the spectacular NASA photos of Earth as it appeared from Saturn —nearly 900 million miles away (1.4 billion kilometers) —as well as a photo of our planet as it appeared from Mercury, nearly 61 million miles (98 million km) distant. NASA took the photos Friday (July 19) using the Cassini spacecraft around Saturn and the Messenger spacecraft around Mercury as part of a global campaign to show the world how the solar system views our planet Earth. The space agency even worked to coordinate campaigns to involve space fans by having them wave at Saturn. The images, by far, are amazing. Earth and its moon stand out as bright pinpricks of light in Messenger's view from Mercury, while our planet is a pale, fuzzy dot nestled between Saturn's rings in the Cassini view. From my perspectiv...

The first powered airship took to the skies on September 24, 1852, and the golden age of this type of aircraft ended with the tragic Hindenburg disaster on May 6, 1937. These days, we mostly see airships in the form of floating billboards. However, some have refused to let go of the notion that airships may have an important role to play in the future of air travel. Science fiction authors and filmmakers often feature reinvented takes on airships. And as it turns out, they could be onto something. Manufactured by Montebello, California-based American aircraft company the Worldwide Aeros Corporation, the Aeroscraft is a far cry from the blimps of the past. From its rigid structure to its control of static heaviness (COSH) system, it’s a modern aircraft that incorporates many cutting edge and ground-breaking technologies. The first functioning prototype, a more basic model known as The Pelican, was successfully floated on January 3, 2013 in Tustin, California. The Pelican w...

Depleted uranium rounds sound exactly like the kind of thing you’d want to stay right the hell away form. Even with the “depleted” bit thrown in there, these things still sound worse than wasps made of anthrax. In a nutshell, depleted uranium rounds are exactly what you’d expect: rounds with a small amount of uranium crammed in them, because the pointy metal thing that flew at you at 400 MPH wasn’t dangerous enough. It’s not what these rounds do to the human body that makes them terrifying though; it’s what they do to armour.

Remains of shipwrecks and rusted machinery stretch out on the rocks of South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope like the carcasses of extinct beasts. Casualties of the extreme weather that gave the area the nickname Cape of Storms, these abandonments have been left to deteriorate as a reminder to sailors of just how perilous the waters can be. While the intersection of cold swells from Antarctica and a warm current of the Indian Ocean is responsible for most of the danger, the former lighthouse - which wasn’t quite tall enough to be of much use - certainly didn’t help. A 5,500-ton Portuguese ship called the Lusitania is among those to have wrecked here. The Cape is also the setting for the myth of The Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship doomed to sail the seas forever.

Honoré Fragonard was a bit of an odd sausage to say the least. The anatomist, who lived from 1732 to 1799, was a pioneer of his day. “Ecorchés” are flayed figures depicting the body without skin - essentially a naked body of muscles. Before Fragonard came along, ecorchés were imagined works of art: paintings and sculptures of the male or female form. Fragonard, however, had other ideas. He created his ecorchés from actual corpses.

Getting into your house, protecting your data, and finding your stuff gets help with sophisticated devices new to the market. Here are eight security products that will help get you indoors, safeguard your valuables, and help you find things. Goji The Goji Smart Lock is a lock for your front door that replaces your deadbolt, and that you can control with your smartphone. Via the Goji app, your phone can receive a picture, text, or app alert whenever someone is at your door. You can schedule access via the app, text, or email, if you want to let a friend inside while you're away. And for people in your life who don't own smartphones, Goji comes with old-fashioned keys and programmable Bluetooth Low Energy fobs. The lock runs on batteries, though, so make sure you have spares on hand.

Months before Hurricane Sandy hurled the Atlantic Ocean into houses and cities along the East Coast, another record-breaking cyclone battered North America, helping push this year's Arctic sea ice to a record low, a new study finds. Arctic sea ice has been declining for decades, reaching a record low in September 2007 and hitting that record again in 2012.  "The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012" arose in Siberia on Aug. 2 and crossed the Arctic Ocean to Canada, lasting an unusually long 13 days. The cyclone hit a pressure minimum of 966 millibars on Aug. 6, the lowest ever recorded for an Arctic storm, professors Ian Simmonds and Irina Rudeva of the University of Melbourne in Australia report in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The pressure reading is only 26 mb higher than Hurricane Sandy's record low of 940 mb. (A typical low-pressure system usually hits around 1,000 mb.) "This pressure minimum and cyclone long...

Most Amazing The Pavilion Protects Your Car and and VOLVO Developers The 'NO DEATH' CAR Although solar power is a resource that most of us agree we should be taking far more advantage of, the truth is that solar panels are often just as visually uncool as they are inefficient relative to other sources of energy. However, as manufacturing processes evolve to allow for more adventurous designs, the shift to aesthetically pleasing solar harvesters is gathering momentum, as exemplified by this new device created as an add-on to Volvo's V60 electric vehicle. Designed by Los Angles-based architecture studio Synthesis, the idea is the winner of the international "Switch to Pure Volvo" competition that called for an innovative solution to showcase the automaker's latest electric vehicle. The collapsible pavilion uses integrated photovoltaic panels tensioned over carbon fibre rods to create an attractively futuristic butterfly wing-like covering that bot...

By engineering cells to express a modified RNA called "Spinach," researchers have imaged small-molecule metabolites in living cells and observed how their levels change over time. Metabolites are the products of individual cell metabolism. The ability to measure their rate of production could be used to recognize a cell gone metabolically awry, as in cancer, or identify the drug that can restore the cell's metabolites to normal. "The ability to see metabolites in action will offer us new and powerful clues into how they are altered in disease and help us find treatments that can restore their levels to normal," says Dr. Samie R. Jaffrey, an associate professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Jaffrey led the study, which included three other Weill Cornell investigators. "Metabolite levels in cells control so many aspects of their function, and because of this, they provide a powerful snapshot of what is going on inside a c...