Robert H.Goddard The ROCKET MAN

Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945) was an American physicist, engineer and the father of modern rocketry. He built the first liquid-fuelled rocket and his work was directly responsible for spaceflight. The story goes like this: As a 17-year-old boy in 1899, Goddard had a life-changing experience when he climbed a cherry tree, looked up at the stars and decided he would try to build a vehicle that could reach space, specifically Mars.

 From that day, Goddard dedicated his life to achieving his crazy goal and celebrated that day every year as his ‘Anniversary Day’ – the day his life found its purpose.

Goddard went on to study physics, engineering and aerodynamics and spent the rest of his life calculating formula, researching data and painstakingly testing his designs. After Goddard published his most important paper in 1919, which stated the science behind his rockets and his belief that they could be used to explore space, he received harsh criticism from the press who thought his claims were a joke. After years of this type of criticism, Goddard escaped into his work, becoming more reclusive and eventually relocated to New Mexico where he could work in peace.
 By the time of his death in 1945, the highest altitude one of his rockets reached was a fairly modest 2.7kms, but he had filed over 200 engineering patents and laid the groundwork for all of today’s rocket engines.

What an amazing man – this guy dedicated his entire life to a goal that he knew would never be achieved in his lifetime, made him look like a fool to the general public and a pariah to his colleagues. Yet his dream and conviction was so strong that he just kept working away at a thankless endeavour, never letting what other people said break his spirits.

You can watch a nice five-minute biography of Goddard in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Click here, it starts at the 17min mark.

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Apple Lawyer Outs Internal Samsung Documents That Claim The iPhone Is “Easy To Copy”

The PATENT CASE BETWEEN APPLE AND IPHONE came for hearing trial in U.S. court...Today the first shots were fired in the high-profile U.S. patent war between Apple and Samsung, beginning with Apple’s opening statements.

And no punch was pulled — Apple’s lawyer made a few hard-hitting claims in the courtroom, providing documents that show Samsung thought the iPhone was “easy to copy.” Harold McElhinny (Apple’s lawyer) also showed documents prepared by a Samsung executive that claim that the company was in a “crisis of design” because of the iPhone.

The presentation also included images of Samsung’s design evolution between pre-iPhone time and now.

But despite the evidence, McElhinny’s most crushing blow may have come in the form of a simple and well-known tech adage: “As we all know, it is easier to copy than to innovate. Apple had already taken the risks.”

However, just saying the hardware is easily copied isn’t proof of copying it, which is why McElhinny returned to evidence introduced in pre-trial, depicting Samsung’s phones before 2007 and their phones after the iPhone’s debut.

Take a look:

According to McElhinny’s argument in court (via Reuters), the main question the court would have to answer was how Samsung went from the phones on the left to the phones on the right.

Apple argues that 22.7 million devices sold by Samsung are in violation of patent infringement, and that the company is seeking up to $2.525 billion in damages. Samsung will follow up in its opening statement later this afternoon.

TECHMAN

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London 2012 archery: The 3rd Olympics Google doodle of its kind

London 2012 archery Google doodle is the third time the sport has hit the bulls eye as far as Olympics related doodles are concerned.

The first archery related Google doodle was on September 18, 2000, day 4 of the Sydney Olympic games. The doodle represented a kangaroo taking aim at one of the letter Os in the Google logo.

The archery event at Sydney was held at the Sydney International Archery Park. The Korean team won three out of the four gold medals contested. Eight Olympic records and three world records were broken at the Sydney Olympics.

The day 5 of Athens Olympics, 17th August 2004, saw archery stake claim to another Google doodle. This doodle had a woman in traditional Greek dress taking aim.

The archery competition at Athens was held at the Panathinaiko Stadium. The Korean team, again, won three out of the four gold medals contested. Four Olympic records and several other world records were broken at these games.

It will be interesting to see what sport finds its place in Sunday's Google doodle.

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SOME INTERSTING INFO TO KNOW

1) If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on the right side of your mouth. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on the left side of your mouth.
2) To make half a kilo of honey, bees must collect nectar from over 2 million individual flowers
3) Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by ‘Bayer’.
4) Communications giant Nokia was founded in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill by Fredrik Idestam.
5) Tourists visiting Iceland should know that tipping at a restaurant is considered an insult!
6) People in nudist colonies play volleyball more than any other sport.
7) Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, but he declined.
8 ) Astronauts can’t belch – there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
9) Ancient Roman, Chinese and German societies often used urine as mouthwash.
10) The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.
11) The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. In the Renaissance era, it was fashion to shave them off!
12) Because of the speed at which Earth moves around the Sun, it is impossible for a solar eclipse to last more than 7 minutes and 58 seconds.
13) The night of January 20 is “Saint Agnes’s Eve”, which is regarded as a time when a young woman dreams of her future husband.
14) There are over 25 million bubbles waiting to burst out of each bottle of Champagne
15) Google is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros
16) It takes glass one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times!
17) The heat of peppers is rated on the Scoville scale
18) Gold is the only metal that doesn’t rust, even if it’s buried in the ground for thousands of years
19) Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end
20) If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.
21) Each year 2,000,000 smokers either quit smoking or die of tobacco-related diseases.
22) When it originally appeared in 1886 – Coca Cola was billed as an Esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage.
23) Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals
24) Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers.
25) The song, Auld Lang Syne, is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.
26) For every real Christmas tree harvested, two to three seedlings are planted in its place.
27) Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent
28) Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn’t smoke unless it’s heated above 450°F
29) The Shell Oil Company originally began as a novelty shop in London that sold seashells
30) The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
31) Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean
32) The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man
33) Airports at higher altitudes require a longer airstrip due to lower air density
34) Fish and Chip selling officially remained an offensive trade until 1940 due to the smell it produces
35) The University of Alaska spans four time zones
36) The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.

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Scientists who Were Killed by Their Own Experiments

These are the great people whose discoveries have changed the world but they were unfortunate as they died or injured themselves while performing their experiments. The advances they have made to science are incredible and many of them opened the doors for some of man’s greatest discoveries and inventions.

Sir David Brewster

Sir David was a Scottish scientist, and a writer. Optics and light polarization was the field of his interest. Optics is a a field requiring excellent vision. In 1831, Sir David performed a chemical experiment which almost blinded him. He remained affected with eye troubles until his death. Sir David Brewster is well known as the inventor of the kaleidoscope – a toy that has gives joy to millions of children over the years.

Alexander Bogdanov

Alexander Bogdanov was a Russian physician, philosopher, economist, and a science fiction writer. In 1924, he started experiments with blood transfusion. After performing 11 transfusions himself, he stated that he had suspended his balding, and improved his eyesight. Unfortunately, Bogdanov forgot to test the health of the blood of the donor which he was using. In 1928, Bogdanov took a transfusion of blood infected with malaria and tuberculosis which made him died shortly.

Karl Scheele

Scheele was a pharmaceutical chemist and had discovered many chemical elements. The most notable of his discoveries were oxygen, molybdenum, tungsten, manganese and chlorine. He also discovered a process very similar to pasteurization. Scheele had the habit of taste testing his discoveries and managed to survive his taste-test of hydrogen cyanide. But he was unfortunate while tasting mercury and died from the symptoms of mercury poisoning.

Elizabeth Ascheim

After the death of the mother, Elizabeth Fleischman Ascheim married her family doctor, Woolf. Woolf was very much exited about the new discovery of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen x-rays. His wife also became equally interested in it and she gave up her job as a bookkeeper to continue studies in electrical science. Finally, she bought an x-ray machine and kept it in her husbands office which was the first x-ray lab in San Francisco.
Using themselves as subjects, She and her husband spent some years in experimenting with the machine. Unfortunately, they did not realize the consequences of their lack of protection to x-rays and Elizabeth died of an extremely widespread and violent cancer.

Jean Francois De Rozier

Jean Francois was a teacher of chemistry and physics. In 1783, he witnessed the world’s first balloon flight that created a passion in him for flight. After testing various flights of a sheep, a chicken, and a duck, he took the first manned free flight in a balloon. He traveled at an altitude of 3,000 feet using a hot air balloon. Later, De Rozier planned a crossing of the English Channel from France to England. He took the flight but unfortunately after reaching 1,500 feet in a combined hot air and gas balloon, the balloon deflated and made him to fall to his death.

Sir Humphry Davy

Sir Humphry Davy was a brilliant British chemist and inventor. He got a very rough start to his science career. As a young trainee, he was fired from his job because he caused too many explosions while performing experiments. He was so much passionate about chemistry that he took it up as the field of his career. He had a habit of inhaling various gases while dealing with them. Luckily this habit led to his discovery of the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide. But, unfortunately, this same habit led to him nearly killing himself on many occasions. The frequent poisonings of gases made him useless for the remaining two decades of his life. He had also damaged his eyes permanently in a nitrogen trichloride explosion.

Michael Faraday

After the injury of a brilliant British chemist Sir Humphrey Davy’s eyes, Faraday became an trainee to him. He made efforts to improve Davy’s methods of electrolysis and to make useful discoveries in the field of electro-magnetics. Unfortunately, Faraday also suffered damage to his eyes in a nitrogen chloride explosion. He spent the rest of his life suffering with chronic chemical poisoning.

Louis Slotin

Slotin worked on the US project to design the first nuclear bomb. While performing experiments for his project, he accidentally dropped a sphere of beryllium on a second sphere causing a prompt critical. It is known from other scientists who were in the room that they had witnessed a blue glow of air ionization and felt a heat wave. Slotin was rushed to hospital where he died nine days later.
The amount of radiation he was exposed to was equivalent to standing 4800 feet away from an atomic bomb explosion.

Marie Curie

Curie along with her husband Pierre discovered radium in 1898. She spent rest of her life performing radiation research and studying radiation therapy. Her constant exposure to radiation led to her contracting leukemia and due to which she died in 1934. Curie is the first and only person who received two Nobel prizes in science in two different fields, chemistry and physics.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo also referred to as the “father of modern physics”.  His work on the refinement of the telescope was brilliant. It opened up the doors of the universe for future generations. But it also damaged his eyesight. He was fascinated with the sun and spent many hours staring at it. As a result of which, he got extreme damage to his retinas. This was the most likely cause of his near blindness in the last four years of his life.

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24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)

24 places NOT to see before you die
It’s every traveler’s fear: After all the planning, preparation, and time and money spent, your trip turns out to be a total bust. But for travel writer Catherine Price, ending up at a bad place isn’t necessarily a bad thing – at the very least, you’ll be bringing back a good story.
In her new book, “101 Places Not To See Before You Die,” Price has compiled a lighthearted list of horrible destinations, attractions and events from around the world that intrepid travelers should avoid at all costs. Here are top 24 places not to visit before you die.


1. The Mummies of Guanajuato
A museum display comprised of the exhumed bodies of mostly anonymous Mexicans whose relatives couldn’t afford a “grave tax,” the Mummies make for a macabre attraction in the town of Guanajuato, Mexico. Some visitors says that maybe a traveling mummy show is not the most respectful way to deal with the remains of indigent Mexicans, but otheres disagree: the mummies are so popular that in the fall of 2009, they were taken to the United States for a seven-city tour.




24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
2. Winchester Mystery House

This bizarre 1880s mansion in San Jose, Calif. (above), has 160 rooms and countless staircases and passageways that lead to nowhere – thanks to its eccentric owner, an heiress to the Winchester rifle company. On the advice of a psychic, Sarah Winchester had construction crews work round-the-clock for almost 40 years to appease the angry spirits of those killed by Winchester guns. “The effect of all this – the gift shop, the mile-long tour through endless empty rooms … leaves you feeling surprisingly empty.”




24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
3. Corbet’s Couloir in Jackson Hole, Wyoming

This double-black diamond ski slope on Rendezvous Mountain is one of the most dangerous in the world, thanks to a 30-ft. free fall onto a 55-degree slope surrounded by jagged rocks. “A must-miss spot for anyone who would prefer not to meet their doom on skis,”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
4. Four Corners monument

There’ nothing to do at the only point where four states intersect – New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and Colorado – except engage in “geographic Twister.” “The main tourist activity,” says Price, “is getting down on all fours so you can take a picture of yourself in each state.” Another reason not to bother? Price writes that the Four Corners monument is actually 1,807 feet of where it should be.



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
5. Euro Disney

Called a “cultural Chernobyl” by snooty French folks after it opened near Paris in 1992, Euro Disney – now known as Disneyland Paris – was an initial flop thanks to several tactical errors, says Price. It debuted during a European recession, offended would-be workers by requiring “appropriate undergarments,” and didn’t take into account France’s cold winter season. Even worse, says Price, is that the park turned off its European guests by banning alcohol in park restaurants.



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
6. The Seattle Gum Wall

For many, it’s a kitschy, colorful work of art – a brick wall in an alley next to the Market Theater in Seattle that’s covered almost completely in chewing gum put there by thousands of visitors over the past 15 or so years. For Price, the Gum Wall is simply “disgusting.” “Under no circumstances should you be allowed to take (a) moist, warm wad out of your mouth, stick it on a public wall, and call it art.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
7. The top of Mt. Washington in a snowstorm

Though only 6,300 feet high, this New Hampshire mountain is one of the most dangerous peaks in the world. Located at the convergence of several storm tracks, Mt. Washington gets snowstorms and 200 mph, hurricane-force winds year-round. “If you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself on Mt. Washington during a winter storm and can’t find shelter, you’re probably going to die,” says Price. “But at least you’ll have something pretty to look at: rime ice, a feathery frosting that’s beloved by nature photographers.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
8. The Blarney Stone

The huge rock, set into the battlements of Blarney Castle near the Irish town of Cork in the 1300s, is said to bless those who kiss it with the gift of eloquence. “The stone’s actual powers are debatable,” says Price, “but one thing’s for sure – the Blarney Stone is a germaphobe’s nightmare. Kissed by more than 400,000 people per year, it’s covered with trace bits of spit left behind with every pucker.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
9. Kingman Reef

Although the water around this small Pacific Ocean reef 1,000 miles south of Hawaii is teeming with marine life and corals, a visit is hardly worth the trouble, says Price. “Kingman Reef is an uninhabited spit of smashed coral and shells, decorated by occasional pieces of human-made flotsam: plastic bottles, broken bits of Styrofoam, and a large number of widowed flip-flops.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
10. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Located in Arizona on the U.S.-Mexico border, Organ Pipe Cactus is a national park known for more than its desert wildlife and distinctive cacti – its an infamous border crossing for drug traffickers and illegal immigrants. “This doesn’t deter visitors,” says Price of the more than 1,000 guests per night. “Granted, most of those visitors have entered the United States illegally. But if they’re willing to deal with the desert’s 116-degree summer heat, venomous snakes … and, of course, drug traffickers, perhaps it’s only fair to let them spend the night.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
11. Stonehenge

Built in stages between 3,000 and 1,600 B.C., Stonehenge is a mysterious, supposedly mystical site in England that attracts thousands of New Agey-visitors and neo-pagans, especially during the summer solstice.

Unfortunately, ancient mysticism has given way to modern-day commercialism. Stonehenge, writes Price, “is cut off from surrounding fields by a chain-link fence. A large parking lot sits nearby with a gift shop, ice cream vendors, Port-O-Potties, and a subterranean visitors’ center. An entrance fee of more than $10 only allows you to walk around the periphery of the circle, kept at a safe distance by a wire guardrail.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
12. The top of Mount Everest

“Unless you love frostbite, hypoxia, blinding snow, and high-altitude games of Russian roulette,” says Price, “do Nepal a favor and stay home.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
13. Juarez, Mexico

Drug wars and alleged abuse of citizens by the Mexican army and the Cuidad Juarez police force have turned this bustling border city across from El Paso, Tex., into a highly dangerous place to visit. More than 1,800 people were killed in Juarez between January 2008 and early 2009, according to Price. “The border is indeed exhilarating – but unfortunately for anyone trying to live or visit Cuidad Juarez, not in a good way.”




24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
14. Times Square on New Year’s Eve

Being stuck in a massive crowd on a freezing night with no bathrooms available – and no liquor allowed – does not a New Year’s party make. “If you value your sanity, your extremities, and your bladder, you should find a different place to celebrate the new year,” says Price.



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
15. BART – Bay Area Rapid Transit

Smelly, excessively loud and with no trains running from midnight to 4 a.m., San Francisco’s public transportation system is a mess, says Price. It’s also vulnerable to earthquakes, she claims. “One can only hope that if and when the big one comes, it does so between the hours of midnight and 4 a.m.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
16. Pamplona, from the perspective of a bull

Considering that right after the annual running of the bulls festivities in Pamplona they end up drugged, diced and dead at the hands of a matador, “This is officially the worst day ever” if you happen to be a bull.



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
17. Mid-January in Whittier, Alaska

One of the most secluded towns in Alaska, Whittier was built as a secret military base in WWII and has a population hovering near 200, writes Price. It’s also extremely difficult to reach – a one-lane tunnel than can only accommodate one direction of traffic at a time is still the only land route into town. Making matters worse, a massive rockslide in 2009 (above) blocked the road leading to the tunnel, stranding most Whittier residents for more than a month.




24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
18. Action Park, N.J.

Known for “treacherous rides, untrained employees and copious beer stands,” says Price, “Action Park – also known as Traction Park, Class Action Park and Death Park – was an amusement park in Vernon Township, New Jersey. Responsible for at least six deaths and countless accidents, it inspired so many personal injury lawsuits that in 1996, it was forced to shut down.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
19. Black Rock City during the Burning Man festival

The annual anything-goes art festival in the Nevada desert that culminates in the immolation of a giant wooden sculpture – aka “Burning Man” – it can be a “life-changing experience, a chance to break free of societal norms and spend a week indulging in so-called ‘radical self-expression,’ ” says Price. “But if you don’t enjoy being surrounded by drugs and naked people coated in glitter, you probably should not attend.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
20. Mount Rushmore

“While Mount Rushmore is an impressive achievement, it’s not really that interesting,” says Price. “It was built specifically to draw visitors to South Dakota’s Black Hills. “Take into account the fact that the sculptures were carved into hills considered sacred to the Lakota Sioux, and it starts to seem less like a testament to the American spirit and more like an example of us looking like jerks.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
21. An overnight stay at a Korean temple

Price once joined a travel program that allowed guests to experience life as a Buddhist monk by staying at a Korean temple. “It sounded like such a nice idea – 24 hours of living as a monk – but that’s before I had to trade in my clothes for a scratchy wool suit, spend an afternoon sorting through potatoes in 90-degree heat, sleep on the floor (in the scratchy wool suit), and get up at 3:30 a.m. – after falling asleep at 1 a.m. – to meditate in the dark,” says Price. “I spent most of the time killing mosquitoes and then feeling guilty about the karmic implications.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
22. A Buzkashi Match

“An Afghan tradition, buzkashi is an animal-rights advocate’s nightmare: a sport in which three teams of horsemen compete to score goals with the body of a dead, headless goat,” says Price. The prize for the winning team: Barbecuing the goat.



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
23. Gloucester Cheese Rolling Competition

“A yearly festival in which scores of people gather at Cooper’s Hill near Gloucester, England, for the chance to chase a piece of cheese off a cliff,” says Price. “Bones are broken. Joints are dislocated. Contestants are carried off the field on stretchers. Runners are risking life and limb for the glory of winning a 7-lb. round of Double Gloucester cheese.”



24 places NOT to see before you die (24 images)
24. Centralia, Penn.

Though not one of Price’s choices, no list of places NOT to visit would be complete without mention of Centralia, a former Pennsylvania mining town under which an underground coal fire has been burning for almost 50 years. In the photo above, the heat from the eternal blaze has cracked the highway leading into town. Once home to about 1,000 people, the town’s population now numbers less than a dozen.

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