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Niagara Falls Running Dry

February 9th 2011 01:45
As reported on the Daily Mail, in June 1969, U.S. engineers diverted the flow of the Niagara River away from the American side of the falls for several months.

Below are some stark images of the icon without its world famous water flow.

Read more: Really Long Link



Niagara falls dry
The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers studied the riverbed and mechanically bolted and strengthened a number of faults to delay the gradual erosion of the American Falls.




Niagara Falls without the water
In order to stop the Niagara River running over the American Falls, engineers constructed a dam consisting of 27,800 tons of rock, stopping the water for the first time in 12,000 years.




Niagara Falls repairs
Two rockslides from the plate of the falls in 1931 and 1954 had caused a large amount of rock to be collected at the base






Niagara falls dry on the american side
The temporary dam can be seen in the top-right of this photograph




Niagara falls as per normal
The American Falls as they normally appear, with millions of gallons of water hurtling over the edge every minute


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Early Human Migration

February 4th 2011 02:33
Historical migration of human populations begins with the movement of Homo erectus out of Africa across Eurasia about a million years ago. Homo sapiens appear to have occupied all of Africa about 150,000 years ago, moved out of Africa 70,000 years ago, and had spread across Australia, Asia and Europe by 40,000 years BC. Migration to the Americas took place 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, and by 2,000 years ago, most of the Pacific Islands were colonised.

Click on the chart below to see a visualisation of early human migration.



early human migration
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Visual History Of Thanksgiving

January 21st 2011 01:59


What is the history of Thanksgiving and it's traditions?

It all started in the early 1600s and has since become one of the biggest holidays across America.

The info-graphic below lays out the visual timeline.


Visual History of Thanksgiving
Click on the info-graphic to open the full version in a new window.

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Women In The Workplace

December 24th 2010 02:14
As reported on the above post on College Candy, women have come along way in the workforce, but there is still more to be done to achieve equality.
It's hard to believe that just 100 years ago it was still rare for women to take up any work at all!


Women in the Workforce
Click to enlarge

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Unsolved Crimes

December 20th 2010 01:24
As reported on Raw Justice, contrary to what many TV shows will have you believe, there are crimes that remain unsolved.
Below are some of the most famous and baffling unsolved crimes. Read the full list of 15 crimes here.


unsolved murder mysteries
Jack The Ripper
Perhaps the best known unsolved crimes of all time were perpetrated by one Jack the Ripper, aka the Whitechapel Murderer or “Leather Apron.” Jack murdered at least five (many believe more) prostitutes in the East End of London between August and November of 1888. The prostitutes didn’t have much in common aside from their profession and the fact that they were believed to have been drunk at the times of their deaths. After probably soliciting his soon-to-be victim for sex and waiting for her to drop her hands to lift her skirt, Jack grabbed her by the throat and strangled her until she was either dead or unconscious. Once the body was prone, he slit the throat and mutilated it in various ways, once even removing the kidney of a victim without damaging any of the other organs. Surprisingly, no evidence of sexual molestation post-mortem was ever found.

One of the main reasons the case is so infamous is because the press was a rising influence in London society, which was also fraught with political difficulties at the time, and the highly-literate citizenry followed closely the way the police handed the case was handled by the police and politicians. Hundreds of letters were sent to various newspapers and other recipients but only three of them led to any real clues. Two were signed “Jack the Ripper,” which is where the moniker comes from, and one included the line “From Hell,” which was then used as the title for a pretty awful 2001 movie about the case starring Johnny Depp and Heather Graham. The movie expands on the popular and salacious theory that Prince Albert Victor, also known as Eddy, was behind the murders. Other suspects included a surgeon’s son, a cotton broker and prolific diarist, a psychopathic Polish Jewish misogynist, and a doctor arrested for homosexual activity.



The dissapearance of Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa was the son of a Pennsylvania coal miner who grew to be the bullying head of the Teamsters Union after his predecessor was (shock of shocks) ousted for financial misdeeds. Hoffa was the stereotypical union leader: buddy-buddy with some politicians (i.e. Richard Nixon) and enemies of others (Robert Kennedy), a gruff man with “close friends” in the Mafia whose style he emulated (think tailored suits and Gucci loafers) and arbitrary system of morality he believed in. Hoffa was staunchly against JFK’s adulterous behavior and yet had been arrested and served time in prison for mail fraud, forgery, conspiracy and jury tampering before Nixon commuted his sentence to time served. After he was released from prison, he quickly began a campaign to assert his influence in union activities, but met with only minor success. The man he had named his successor, Frank Fitzsimmons, was well-liked by politicians and mobsters alike, very good people to have on your side.

On July 30, 1975, Hoffa went to meet a Detroit mobster named Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone and a New York/New Jersey Genovese capo named Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano. He called his wife Josephine from outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, to tell her he had been stood up. He never came home. A number of mafiosi and teamsters, including Giacalone’s son Joe, were considered suspects, but not surprisingly, no arrests were ever made. Decades after his disappearance, DNA matched a hair from the back seat of Joe Giacalone’s car to a hair found in Jimmy Hoffa’s hairbrush. No one seems to doubt that the mob was responsible, but the big question that remains is: where is the body? The most plausible clue yet, given to police in 2006, led to a Detroit farm where the authorities found no trace of Hoffa’s remains.



DB Cooper. The unsolved robbery
DB Cooper
The story of D. B. Cooper reads like the plot of a James Bond book, if Bond were more a villain and less of a womanizing do-gooder. On December 24, 1971, a man traveling under the name of Dan Cooper boarded a plane at Portland International Airport bound for Seattle. He was wearing a black suit, raincoat, and sunglasses and he sat in the back of the plane. After the plane took off, he handed a flight attendant a note claiming he had a bomb in his briefcase. It went to say that Cooper wanted two sets of parachutes and $200,000 in unmarked bills when the plane landed in Seattle. The FBI had the flight attendant glance at the bomb, and when she confirmed that there were in fact wires sticking out from his briefcase, they agreed to cooperate. The plane landed in Seattle, where Cooper sipped a bourbon cocktail and waited for his money. When all was delivered, the plane took off again, this time headed toward Reno, Nevada, to refuel before a trip to Mexico City, but over the southern part of Washington, Cooper strapped on a parachute and jumped out of the plane.

The case has baffled and excited citizens of the Northwest and Americans alike since the hijacking. In 2009, a group of amateur detectivesincluding “a fossil hunter who works with the Burke Museum of Natural History in Seattle, a well-known scientific illustrator, an Egyptologist who speaks 12 languages, a metallurgist, and an Arkansas man who discovered $5,800 of the loot in $20 bills while throwing a Frisbee on the banks of the Columbia River when he was 8 years old” teamed up determined to solve the mystery. They scoured a French comic book series starring a skydiver named D. B. Cooper, took detailed measurements of soil samples of the Columbia River, and decided (using intuition) that Cooper was probably dead.



Tupac Shakur murdered
Tupac
Tupac Shakur, aka 2Pac, Pac, or Makaveli, was born in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City in 1971. He was raised by members of the Black Panther Party and began studying poetry, jazz, and ballet dancing after the family, sans jailed stepfather, moved to Baltimore when he was in high school. He began his career dancing back-up for Digital Underground but by 1992, had gone solo and released his first album entitled 2paclypse Now. By this time, Tupac was twenty years old and had already been arrested eight times on charges varying from sexual abuse to wrongful death after a child was killed during gang warfare. This was the height of the feud between the East Coast and West Coast hip hop artists, and Tupac was deeply involved in this strife.

In early September of 1996, Tupac traveled to Las Vegas to see a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon. He sat ringside with the owner of his record label, “Suge” Knight. After the fight (which lasted all of two minutes,) Shakur and his crew went to Knight’s house and from there, started off toward Club 662, where Shakur was set to perform with Run DMC and hang with Tyson, who was supposed to make an appearance. When they stopped at a red light near the strip, a white Cadillac pulled up aside them and fired thirteen bullets into their car. That Friday, the 13th, Tupac was pronounced dead. A witness to the murder, friend Yafeu Fala, was murdered two months later, AFTER he said he’d testify. His friend-turned-rival, Notorious B.I.G., was murdered less than a year later, though many believe the two to be living happily off royalties on a tropical island somewhere.



famous unsolved murders
JonBenet Ramsey
Tiny 5-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey’s life was a golden one. She was the beloved child of John, a successful businessman, and Patsy, a former beauty queen who doted on her towheaded daughter. All that was to come to an end, though, in the wee hours of Christmas morning, 1996, when JonBenet’s body was found in the basement of her family’s large suburban Boulder, Colorado home. The story goes that Patsy Ramsey found a ransom note demanding $118,000 in exchange for the child on the stairs of the home around 5 am. She quickly called the police, who arrived 7 minutes later and conducted a rather hasty search of the Ramsey abode. JonBenet’s body was soon found beneath a white blanket in the basement, and thus began a highly publicized case with the media focusing largely on the little girl’s painted pageant get-up and the popular suspicion of the parents.

The investigation fumbled on through the nineties and the early part of the twenty-first century, the culprit in many people’s eyes being the parents or JonBenet’s older brother Burke, who was nine at the time of her murder. Like with many widely known cases, many people stepped forward claiming to know who the killer was. An email was sent to Boulder PD in 2001 by someone who claimed an AOL user had posted writing on the Internet stating they had witnessed JonBenet’s murder. The police followed the lead –– right to a 14-year-old Ohio girl playing a prank. Most notably, John Mark Karr, creepy former teacher and pedophile, confessed to the crime while living in Thailand in 2006, but charges were never filed as it was clear to all that the man was quite simply insane. Recently, he’s the subject of new suspicion as a former pupil of his claims he has been trying to help him recruit little blond girls with small feet to join a cult he wants to form and name “The Immaculates.” Coincidentally enough, JonBenet Ramsey’s murder case has been reopened last month, with brother Burke Ramsey, now 23, among the witnesses to be called.



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Most Famous Bank Robberies

November 26th 2010 02:07
There have been many famous robberies in the United State's history.

The info-graphic sourced from Travelinsurance.org lists the 11 most well known heists. From the $30 million United, California bank robbery to the Lufthansa Heist, they're all there


[ Click here to read more ]
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Innovations That Changed The World

September 20th 2010 02:25
As reported on Newsweek, even the best ideas require the right people to see their potential and get behind them.
If everything falls in place, that idea can change the lives of everyone on the planet.
Below are a sample of Innovations That Rocked the World, read the full article here
[ Click here to read more ]
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Historic Beach Images

September 1st 2010 02:31
It wasn't so long ago that bikinis were nowhere to be seen and bathing during the day was illegal in some areas.
Below are images displaying how your local beach may have appeared 100 years ago.

[ Click here to read more ]
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Declaration of Independence

July 28th 2010 02:36
The United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were now independent states, and thus no longer a part of the British Empire. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The birthday of the United States of America—Independence Day—is celebrated on July 4, the day the wording of the Declaration was approved by Congress.

Click on the image below to view a high resolution image of The United States Declaration of Independence


[ Click here to read more ]
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The first invention patent to be allocated to a woman in the USA was in 1809. Patents to females were still very rare until 1840. Today that figure has grown substantially, and women account for around 20% of all new invention patents.
As that figure continues to grow, let's take a look as some of the most well known female inventors of the last 200 years.

[ Click here to read more ]
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Insects in Amber

May 3rd 2010 23:39
Amber is fossilised tree resin (not sap), which is appreciated for its colour and natural beauty. Good quality amber is used for the manufacture of ornamental objects and jewellery.
amber
The discovery

Amber is formed when tree resin is subjected to high pressures and temperatures over time


[ Click here to read more ]
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Historic Los Angeles

April 21st 2010 01:56
Los Angeles, (Spanish for "The Angels") is the second largest city in the United States.

Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its independence from Spain. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United States


[ Click here to read more ]
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Ancient Historical Photographs

April 16th 2010 23:53
A photograph or photo is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see. The word "photograph" was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek (phos) "light" and (graphe) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing", together meaning "drawing with light".

Here are some of the earliest photographs ever taken and their historical significance


[ Click here to read more ]
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The San Francisco Earthquake in Colour

February 1st 2010 01:23
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 struck on Wednesday, April 18. It ruptured along the San Andreas Fault both northward and southward for a total of 296 miles (477 km). Shaking was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, and inland as far as central Nevada. The earthquake and resulting fire are remembered as the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. The death toll from the earthquake and resulting fire, estimated to be above 3,000, is the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history. The economic impact has been compared with the more recent Hurricane Katrina.

Frederick Eugene Ives was an early adopter of color photography and he took these images of San Francisco 6 months after the quake. These images are at street level at the Majestic Hotel


[ Click here to read more ]
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