- StumbleUpon

A Japanese Soldier Who Continued Fighting WWII 29 Years After the Japanese Surrendered, Because He Didn’t Know Today I Found Out about a Japanese soldier who continued fighting World War II a full 29 years after the Japanese surrendered, because he didn’t know the war was over. Hiroo Onoda is a Japanese citizen that originally worked at a Chinese trading company. When he was 20 years old, he was called to join the Japanese army. 60 of the world's happiest facts 1. A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance. 2. If you fake laugh long enough you’ll start to really laugh, really, really hard. 3. The book cover to the prize winning short story collection, Spellbound, was chosen because author, Joel Willans, bought his wife’s engagement ring with poker winnings.

Physics Flash Animations We have been increasingly using Flash animations for illustrating Physics content. This page provides access to those animations which may be of general interest. The animations will appear in a separate window. The animations are sorted by category, and the file size of each animation is included in the listing. Also included is the minimum version of the Flash player that is required; the player is available free from The categories are: Tesla: Master of Lightning "In almost every step of progress in electrical engineering, as well as radio, we can trace the spark of thought back to Nikola Tesla" - Ernst F. W. Alexanderson A letter to my students Welcome to Berkeley, probably still the best public university in the world. Meet your classmates, the best group of partners you can find anywhere. The percentages for grades on exams, papers, etc. in my courses always add up to 110% because that’s what I’ve learned to expect from you, over twenty years in the best job in the world. That’s the good news.

A tribute to Prince Charles, champion of anti-science, on his 65th birthday Today, Prince Charles celebrates his 65th birthday. He is one of the world’s most tenacious, outspoken and influential proponent of alternative medicine and attacker of science - sufficient reason, I think, to join the birthday-celebrations by outlining a chronology of his love affair with quackery. The following post highlights just a few events (there are so many more!) which I happen to find interesting. As I was personally involved in several of them, I have tried to stay as close as possible to the text published by journalists at the time (with links to the originals); this, I thought, was fairer than providing my own, possibly biased interpretations. The origins Charles’ passion for all things alternative are not difficult to trace.

What would happen if I drilled a tunnel through the center of th" Want to really get away from it all? The farthest you can travel from home (and still remain on Earth) is about 7,900 miles (12,700 kilometers) straight down, but you'll have to journey the long way round to get there: 12,450 miles (20,036 kilometers) over land and sea. Why not take a shortcut, straight down? You can get there in about 42 minutes -- that's short enough for a long lunch, assuming you can avoid Mole Men, prehistoric reptiles and underworld denizens en route. Granted, most Americans would end up in the Indian Ocean, but Chileans could dine out on authentic Chinese, and Kiwis could tuck into Spanish tapas for tea [sources: NOVA; Shegelski].

Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived Additional notes from the author: If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla. Ben's also got a book out which is packed full of awesome. There's an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It's corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life. The drunk history of Tesla is quite awesome, too. History.com has a great article about Edison and how his douchebaggery had a chokehold on American cinema.

Computer Generations The the late 1960s and early 70s, there was much talk about "generations" of computer technology. This photo illustrates what were commonly known as the three generations: First generation: Vacuum tubes (left). Mid 1940s. IBM pioneered the arrangment of vacuum tubes in pluggable modules such as the one shown here on the left. The IBM 650 was a first-generation computer.