There’s a Town in Italy that doesn’t get sunlight for 84 days a year. They’ve solved this problem with a giant mirror:

Call it the reverse Montgomery Burns scheme. The little town of
Viganella is located amidst the Italian side of the Alps. During the
winter time, the shift in the sun’s pattern makes it so that it never
clears the 1600 feet tall mountain that’s close to the town. This means
that for 84 days, they do not get any
sunlight. The townspeople end up suffering from Seasonal Affective
Disorder, a type of mild depression.

To solve this, the
government installed a massive mirror on the side of the mountain. It
measure 26×16 feet and is computer controlled to follow the trajectory
of the Sun. The result is that starting in 2006, the town was able to
celebrate the first winter sun in 600 years!

The destruction of a lesser-known Seattle pseudo-suburb is underway.
This series of a dozen square blocks was lofted forty feet in the air
but, despite looking picture-perfect (a series of pristine streets,
homes, yards and trees) it was never intended for human habitation.

A little anomaly dates back to World War II, this whole fake
neighborhood built atop a Boeing factory south of downtown Seattle,
meant to hide the presence of airplane production facilities below … the
cumulative size of eight football fields.

The Øresund Bridge is a combined twin-track
railway and dual carriageway bridge-tunnel across the Øresund strait
between Sweden and Denmark.

The bridge runs nearly 8 km (5
miles) from the Swedish coast to the artificial island of Peberholm,
which lies in the middle of the strait. The remainder of the link is by
tunnel from Peberholm to the Danish island of Amager. The Øresund Bridge
is the longest combined road and rail
bridge in Europe, and connects two major metropolitan areas: those of
the Danish capital city Copenhagen and the major Swedish city Malmö.
Furthermore, the Øresund Bridge connects the road and rail networks of
Scandinavia with those of Central and Western Europe.

The
justification for the additional expenditure and complexity related to
digging a tunnel for part of the way – rather than simply raising that
section of the bridge – was to avoid interfering with air traffic from
the nearby Copenhagen International Airport, and also to provide a clear
channel for ships in good weather or bad, and to prevent ice floes from
blocking the strait. The Oresund Bridge crosses the border between
Denmark and Sweden, but in accordance with the Schengen Agreement and
the Nordic Passport Union, there are usually no passport inspections.
There are random customs checks at the entrance toll booths for entering
Sweden, but not for entering Denmark.

The theory behind the design is: the longer a customer is inside the
store and the more furniture they see, the more items they are inclined
to buy. This layout is so confusing that oftentimes shoppers make
purchases simply because they are afraid they may never find their way
back to the item!

A study at a store location in Kent, England showed that patrons spent
an average of 3 hours inside the store, with a significant number
remaining for as long a 8 hours! IKEA is quick to deny any intention to
purposely bewilder its customers, citing shortcuts within the facility
(built primarily due to fire code), but the store’s exits still are not
very easy to find.

Akon’s father is Senegalese percussionist Mor Thiam. He was born in St. Louis, but lived back in Senegal until the age of 7. After that, he split time between living in the United States and Senegal until finally settling down in New Jersey at age 15.

Watch Akon pronounce it..!

The oxygen on Earth keeps this from happening. On the outside of all
metal there’s a layer of oxidized metal that prevents metal from
sticking together.

In space, there is no oxidation layer. When pieces of metal come into
contact with each other in space, they stick together to become one
continuous piece of metal.

The word ”buffalo” in the sentence has three meanings: the animal, the
city in New York and the act of ”buffaloing” which is another word
for teasing or bullying. Here is another way of looking at the sentence:
THE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloed BY buffalo FROM Buffalo ALSO
buffalo THE buffalo FROM Buffalo.”

Another grammatical puzzle is ”James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.”

It’s one of the more bewildering baby behaviors you’ll see: Your baby
scrunches up her tiny features and wails deafeningly  — but not a tear
trickles down her cheek.

Newborns don’t shed tears because their tear ducts haven’t fully
formed. But after about a month (once the ducts have had a chance to
develop), why do babies sometimes cry with tears and sometimes without?

In general, tears indicate that your baby’s feeling especially
frustrated or is in some kind of pain, explains Jennifer Shu, M.D.,
coauthor of Heading Home With Your Newborn.

“Babies cry for many reasons  — they’re tired, uncomfortable, bored,
hungry. It’s their only way to communicate their myriad emotions,” says
Dr. Shu. So no tears probably means your baby’s trying to tell you
something, but she’s most likely not in distress.

In some cases, tearless crying can be a sign of something more
serious, like dehydration. If you notice that your baby’s perpetually
dry-eyed, make sure she’s drinking enough fluids. If the problem
persists, her tear ducts may be blocked, a condition that should clear
up on its own within a few months; your pediatrician may recommend you
help it along by gently massaging the inside corners of your baby’s
eyes.

This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. The basic idea behind it has
been a well-established rule for centuries. Charles Darwin, for
instance, has stated “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than
does knowledge”. It has been empirically proven in 1999, by
psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in their report “Unskilled
and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own
Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”.

This was proven through a study in which participants take tests of
their logical reasoning skills, grammatical skills, and humor, and then
estimate their own abilities in those subjects. Those participants who
scored in the bottom quartile grossly overestimated their own abilities.
Those in the12th percentile had estimated themselves to be in the 62nd
percentile.

Overall, Dunning and Kruger found that incompetent people overestimate
their own skill level, fail to recognize the skill of other people and
fail to recognize their own inadequacy. Also, as they receive training
to improve their skills, incompetent people tend become more aware of
their own inabilities.

Penguin females have been observed trading sex for stones! These stones
are valuable to females because they are necessary for building nests.
Male penguins are known for being monogamous, so it is these females
that venture off to make some rocks by making some beds rock!

They typically target single males in order to avoid unnecessary
complications, however scientists believe the intercourse is not merely
for the stones because females would need to copulate with hundreds of
males in order to build a decent nest (they only take 1-2 stones each
time, and a nest requires hundreds!)

Scientists theorize that the females may be testing future mates in case their current partners happened to die.