After visiting a prison in Norway that treated prisoners humanely, a warden from North Dakota went back and reformed her prison based on Norway’s model. It later saw sharp decline in violence against inmates and threats against staff.
The Chief Baker on the Titanic…
The Chief Baker on the Titanic “fortified” himself using alcohol and survived the freezing for two hours until he was rescued from the sinking ocean liner.
In the 1960s, the CEO of Ampex…
In the 1960s, the CEO of Ampex wanted his employees to take LSD to improve their creativity. The board of directors said no, and then had to fire him after they discovered he’d snuck off anyway on a mountain hike with seven or eight engineers and given them LSD.
The Amazon Rainforest Is Burning, and It’s an Environmental Disaster
The Amazon rainforest is on fire, and experts say this wildfire will affect climate change for many years to come.
CNN reported that The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has said the fires are burning at the highest rate they’ve seen since tracking started in 2013.
Sao Paulo, 1700 miles away, is seeing smoke from the fire’s blazes.
Just a little alert to the world: the sky randomly turned dark today in São Paulo, and meteorologists believe it’s smoke from the fires burning *thousands* of kilometers away, in Rondônia or Paraguay. Imagine how much has to be burning to create that much smoke(!). SOS
— Shannon Sims (@shannongsims) August 20, 2019
Video shows heavy smoke and smog overcoming the city and creating black out conditions.
Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay, too, are seeing heavy, black smoke coming from the Brazilian fires.
The INPE also reported there were 72,843 fires in Brazil this year. More than half of those fires burned in the Amazon. This represents an 80 percent increase in the total number of fires over last year.
Photo Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
Natural disasters can spark flames when the area is dry, but these fires are also frequently started illegally by ranchers trying to clear out forest to create grazing land for cattle. Environmentalists are blaming Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, for relaxing laws limiting deforestation and underplaying the disaster in general to the rest of the world.
According to the BBC, the Amazon rainforest contributes 20 percent of the Earth’s oxygen. Plus, the rainforest is home to millions of species of plants and animals, as well as over one million indigenous people.
The rainforest is critical to millions of lives and to the Earth, itself.
Aerial footage shows the world's largest rainforest in flames. Brazil's Amazon is known as "the planet's lungs" for producing about 20 percent of the world's oxygen. This inferno threatens the rainforest ecosystem and also affects the entire globe. https://t.co/h01baMhEvn pic.twitter.com/8yWmTj7CO9
— CNN (@CNN) August 26, 2019
If the Amazon is destroyed, the World Wildlife Fund says the area will likely become a savannah, but inhospitable to people, animals or plants.
And instead of pumping out oxygen, the new savannah will be the Earth’s next major source of carbon emissions. Meaning, the Amazon will no longer serve as the lungs of the world, but will begin pump out enough carbon to actually drive the climate crisis.
This is bad news, folks. Bad news indeed.
The post The Amazon Rainforest Is Burning, and It’s an Environmental Disaster appeared first on UberFacts.
The US Military still uses…
The US Military still uses 8 inch floppy disks on outdated IBM computers to run the nuclear missile systems. It’s because they are incredibly hard to hack. The computers are essentially air-gapped and the old IBM computers are reliable. They could run for another 40 years with spare parts.
When drinking alcohol and getting…
When drinking alcohol and getting the spins, there will be the feeling of acceleration in a particular direction. As the alcohol wears off, there will be the feeling of acceleration in the opposite direction as alcohol leaves the vestibular system.
W. E. B. Du Bois envisioned…
W. E. B. Du Bois envisioned “an Encyclopedia Africana,” named like the Encyclopædia Britannica. Du Bois envisioned a scientific and comprehensive work on Africa and Africans that would refute the Enlightenment notion of blacks as devoid of civilization. Due to lack of support, the project died
In 1936 August Dvorak invented…
In 1936 August Dvorak invented a ‘perfect keyboard’ which is way more efficient than regular keyboards as it requires less finger motion and reduces errors compared to the standard QWERTY keyboard arrangement.
In 1955, Burma-Shave…
In 1955, Burma-Shave ran a promotion for a free trip to Mars if someone sent in 900 empty bottles of their product. It was intended to be a joke, but when a man from Wisconsin duly sent in 900 bottles, they scrambled to honour the promotion; sending him to Moers, Germany.
In Iceland, there is an elf…
In Iceland, there is an elf whisperer who inspects construction sites before building to ensure no elves are hanging around.