Tea

1. The origins of tea:
Legend has it that tea originated well over 5000 years ago in ancient China. The innovative and science-curious emporer Shen Nung insisted that for hygeine purposes, all water in the palace must be boiled. When he was out visiting his kingdom one day, him and his men stopped to boil water to drink and it was said that leaves from a nearby bush fell into the water. Apparently the brew that resulted was so refreshing, the emporer ordered samples of the bush to be brought back to the palace for analysis. Afterwards, word got out and this new phenomenon became fashionable.

2. From the Camellia bush:
Both black and green teas are made from the Camellia sinensis bush and have similar quantities of antioxidants and caffeine.

3. Antioxidant:
Tea contains catechins, a type of antioxidant which has been found to reduce people’s risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Catechins can also be found in cocoa and dark chocolate.

4. Vitamins and minerals:
When combined with milk, tea can offer an array of vitamins and minerals including calcium, vitamin B6, Riboflavin B2, Thiamin B1, manganese for bone growth and repair, and potassium, important for neuron and brain function.

5. Puffy eyes and sunburn:
Teabags can be used to reduce the swelling of puffy eyes. Lie on your back and place a moist teabag over both eyes and leave on for around 20 minutes, this leaves your eyes feeling fresher, brighter, and looking revitalised. Also, a wet teabag can be used to soothe burns and sunburn. By either placing the teabag straight onto the burn or pouring tea into cool bathwater, it has been known to take away the burn’s sting and help the skin heal faster.

6. Tea reduces risk of heart attacks:
Research conducted in the Netherlands suggests that tea can help people avoid heart attacks, especially women. Johanna M Geleijnse, PhD from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam led a study which followed 4807 Dutch adults over the age of 55 who had no heart problems in their previous medical history.

7. Odour absorbant:
It has been found that tea can work as an odour absorbant, removing bad smells especially from your skin. Pouring a cup over your hands is said to work wonders for all kinds of bad odours!

8. Warts and all:
Tea can be used to treat warts as the tannin present in tea is acidic. This element makes tea as effective at removing warts as creams and ointments. Leaving a moist teabag on the wart for 15 minutes, 3 times per day, will cause the wart to shrink and disappear.

9. Caffeine:
The caffeine content of tea is approximately half of the amount that you’d find in a cup of brewed coffee. Whereas coffee provides around 100mg per 190ml cup, tea provides just 50mg, leaving you without the caffeine “drop” so familiar to coffee drinkers.

10. Oral Health:
A report issued by the UK Tea Council in 2006 stated that the fluoride content of tea makes it a potent defender of oral health. Fluoride binds to the tooth enamel, slowing down the tooth decay process and preventing cavities. Also, the instance of tannins in tea inhibits the growth of certain plaque-forming bacteria.

Pen

Lewis Waterman patented the first practical fountain pen in 1884. Writing instruments designed to carry their own supply of ink had existed in principle for over one hundred years before Waterman’s patent.
For example, the oldest known fountain pen that has survived today was designed by a Frenchmen named M. Bion and dated 1702. Peregrin Williamson, a Baltimore shoemaker, received the first American patent for a pen in 1809.
John Scheffer received a British patent in 1819 for his half quill, half metal pen that he attempted to mass manufacture. John Jacob Parker patented the first self-filling fountain pen in 1831. However, early fountain pen models were plagued by ink spills and other failures that left them impractical and hard to sell.
The fountain pen’s design came after a thousand years of using quill-pens. Early inventors observed the apparent natural ink reserve found in the hollow channel of a bird’s feather and tried to produce a similar effect, with a man-made pen that would hold more ink and not require constant dipping into the ink well.
Filling a long thin reservoir made of hard rubber with ink and sticking a metal ‘nib’ at the bottom was not enough to produce a smooth writing instrument.
Lewis Waterman, an insurance salesman, was inspired to improve the early fountain pen designs after destroying a valuable sales contract with leaky-pen ink. Lewis Waterman’s idea was to add an air hole in the nib and three grooves inside the feed mechanism.
A mechanism is composed of three main parts. The nib, which has the contact with the paper. The feed or black part under the nib controls the ink flow from the reservoir to the nib. The round barrel that holds the nib and feed on the writing end protects the ink reservoir internally.
All pens contain an internal reservoir for ink. The different ways that reservoirs filled proved to be one of the most competitive areas in the pen industry. The earliest 19th century pens used an eyedropper; by 1915, most pens had switched to having a self-filling soft and flexible rubber sac as an ink reservoir.
To refill these pens, the reservoirs were squeezed flat by an internal plate, then the pen’s nib was inserted into a bottle of ink and the pressure on the internal plate was released so that the ink sac would fill up drawing in a fresh supply of ink.

RAT

Rats have poor vision. To compensate for this, a red or pink eyed rat will often weave its head side to side to add “motion” to see better. They also don’t see in color.
Rats normally prefer to have cage mates. It is possible to group female or male rats together, though care should be taken when introducing a new rat.
While it’s great to have both female and male rats, be wary of letting them play together; rats can complete the courting ritual and the whole romantic relationship in about two seconds.
Generally speaking, male rats make better “lap” pets, preferring to sit and have their ears scratched by an attentive human friend. Female rats are very curious, and love to explore and play games. Both genders make great companions.
Rats can eat chocolate.
Rats can also eat smaller pets. Rats are omnivores, and have enough predatory instinct left in them to consider birds, fish and even some smaller rodents as “snacks.”
Rats don’t have canine teeth.
Rats don’t have thumbs.
The oils in cedar and pine are toxic to rats, and should not be used in their bedding materials.
A rat’s temperature is regulated though its tail (assuming it has one). A really hot rat will lay on its back so that it can “sweat” through the soles of its feet.
Rats can’t vomit. A rat can, however, gag on something if it eats too quickly. The plus side of this is that rats can usually eat and drink before surgery.
It is unlikely you will ever catch rabies from a rat.
Soda does not make rats explode.
Rats bathe themselves, usually six times a day or more. A rat’s saliva has some pink pigmentation, which can cause a light-colored rat to look discolored. A warm washcloth with baby shampoo is great for those trouble spots.
PEW stands for “Pink Eyed White” the fancy rat terminology for “albino” or any all-white rat with pink eyes. Conversely, BEW stands for “Black Eyed White” (which is not an albino).
Rats have bellybuttons.
Rats don’t have gallbladders.
Rats don’t have tonsils.
A rat’s fur smells like grape soda.

Venus

Venus is known as Earths’ twin sister because of its similar size and proximity to each other.
Its atmosphere is made up mostly of carbon dioxide.
Venus rotates so slowly that it orbits the sun faster than it can make one whole rotation on its axis. In other words, Venus has a longer day than year.
It takes 243 days for Venus to make a rotation.
And it takes 224 days for Venus to orbit around the sun.
Venus is the most widely explored planet aside from our own Earth. Numerous space probes have been sent to Venus to gather data and some have landed on the surface.
It is believed that Venus used to have bodies of water similar to Earth, but dried up over a period of 300 million years when the sun began admitting more solar energy after the sun’s infancy stage.
The clouds of Venus is filled with sulfuric acid.
Venus has mountains that are higher than Earth. Maat Mons is more than 5 miles high.
Venus is the brightest planet viewed from Earth.
The planet rotates from East to West. The only other planet that does this is Uranus.

Strange Facts

The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark.

A crocodile’s tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth.

Giraffes are unable to cough.

Sharks are immune to cancer.

Despite the hump, a camel’s spine is straight.

Cheetah’s can accelerate from 0 to 70 km/h in 3 seconds.

A giraffe’s neck contains the same number of vertebrae as a human.

The heart of giraffe is two feet long, and can weigh as much as twenty four pounds.

On average, Elephants sleep for about 2 hours per day.

Lobsters have blue blood.

Shark’s teeth are literally as hard as steel.

A mosquito has 47 teeth.

Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen make up 90% of the human body.

Ants do not sleep.

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over 1 million descendents.

Hummingbirds can’t walk.

Batu Caves Murugan Temple

Name: Batumalai Sri Subramaniar Swamy Devasthanam
Country: Malaysia
State: Selangor
District: Gombak
Locale: 13 km north of Kuala Lumpur
Primary deity: Murugan
Architectural styles: Dravidian Architecture
Date built: 1891
Creator: K. Thamboosamy Pillai

Batu Caves, is a limestone hill, which has a series of caves and cave temples, located in Gombak district, 13 kilometres north of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It takes its name from the Sungai Batu or Batu River, which flows past the hill. Batu Caves is also the name of the nearby village.

History

The limestone forming Batu Caves is said to be around 400 million years old. Some of the cave entrances were used as shelters by the indigenous Temuan people.

As early as 1860, Chinese settlers began excavating guano for fertilising their vegetable patches. However, they became famous only after the limestone hills were recorded by colonial authorities including Daly and Syers as well as American Naturalist, William Hornaday in 1878.

Batu Caves was promoted as a place of worship by K. Thamboosamy Pillai, an Indian trader. He was inspired by the ‘vel’-shaped entrance of the main cave and was inspired to dedicate a temple to Lord Muruga within the caves.

In 1890, Pillai, who also founded the Sri Mahamariamman Temple, Kuala Lumpur, installed the murti (consecrated statue) of Sri Subramania Swamy in what is today known as the Temple Cave. Since 1892, the Thaipusam festival in the Tamil month of Thai has been celebrated there.

Remote Control

General History

The first machines to be operated by remote control were used mainly for military purposes. Radio-controlled motorboats, developed by the German navy, were used to ram enemy ships in WWI. Radio controlled bombs and other remote control weapons were used in WWII.

Once the wars were over, United States scientists experimented to find nonmilitary uses for the remote control. In the late 1940′s automatic garage door openers were invented, and in the 1950′s the first TV remote controls were used.

History of the TV remote control

Zenith began playing around with the idea of a TV remote control in the early 1950′s. They developed one in 1952 called “Lazy Bones,” which was a long cable that was attached to the TV set. Pushing buttons on the remote activated a motor that would rotate the tuner in the set. This type of remote wasn’t popular for long considering that, at the time, there were very few channels to choose from.

In 1955, the Flash-o-Matic was invented. A flashlight was shined toward light sensitive cells in each of the four corners of the TV. Each corner had a different function. They turned the TV on and off, changed the channel, and controlled the volume. However, people often forgot which corner of the TV operated which control. Also, if the set was in sunlight, the sun’s rays would affect the operations of the TV.

In 1957 a group of engineers developed the Zenith “Space Command,” a wireless remote control using ultrasonic waves. The problem with the ultrasonic control was that clinking metal, such as dog tags, could affect the TV set.

High frequencies sometimes also made dogs bark. The ultrasonic remote was used for two decades until engineers discovered a better way to operate TV’s, the infrared remote control.

On the infrared control, each button has it’s own command, and is sent to the TV set in a series of signals. There is a digital code for each button, and in the TV there is a tiny sensor called a photodetector that identifies the infrared beam, and translates the code into a command.

Manufacturers used to only make remote controls that operated one TV set. However, they’ve recently begun making universal remote controls that can operate any TV set.

Experts predict that someday remote controls will control almost every device in the home.

THE NEXT BEST THIN IS COMING IS GESTURE CONTROL.