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In order to distinguish between the two African countries with "Congo" in their names, the Republic of the Congo is sometimes called Congo-Brazzaville, as opposed to Congo-Kinshasa (the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known from 1971 to 1997 as Zaire, the capital of which is Kinshasa).

The Mercedes-Benz logo is one of those meaningful ones. In 1926, Emil Jellinek, Gottlieb Daimler, and Carl Benz founded what would become one of the world's foremost luxury car companies. The logo is a three-pronged star meant to symbolize universal motorization. The three prongs stand for land, water and air.

They have been tracked by sonar diving to depths of 3,900 feet. However, one Sperm whale caught by a whaling ship in water 10,000 feet deep had a bottom-dwelling shark in its stomach, leading researchers to believe that the Sperm whale can dive a lot deeper than seems possible.

You can use a black light to detect body fluids. It's actually a good way to look for pet urine or make sure a bathroom or hotel room is really clean. Cat urine, in particular, glows very brightly under ultraviolet light. Urine glows under a black light primarily because it contains the element phosphorus.

You have to go back to ancient times when horses were used as war mounts. Soldiers carry their swords on the left side (to reach with their right hand) and so they could only mount from the left or they would sit on their sword.

The source of the Upper Mississippi branch is traditionally accepted as Lake Itasca, 1,475 feet (450 m) above sea level in Itasca State Park in Clearwater County, Minnesota.

The Adam's apple is actually caused by the bulging of a set of cartilage plates that are held together by tissues and muscle fibers, which protect the vocal cords. Women have these plates, too, but the bulge is more prominent in men for two reasons: Testosterone causes the larynx to grow rapidly during puberty,

They have been called striped horses. Similar to horses, female zebras are called mares and male zebras are called stallions. Babies are called foals. Male baby zebras are called colts and female baby zebras are called fillies.

No, and it is unlikely they will ever be able to predict them. Scientists have tried many different ways of predicting earthquakes, but none have been successful. On any particular fault, scientists know there will be another earthquake sometime in the future, but they have no way of telling when it will happen.

Alongside cats and tigers, foxes are solitary hunters. There has been the rare sighting of a vixen hunting with her cub, but in general they will forage and hunt for food alone. Although a fox is classified as a carnivore they are omnivorous and will eat almost anything including fruit and vegetables.

The Australian pound, introduced in 1910 and officially distinct in value from the pound sterling since devaluation in 1931, was replaced by the dollar on 14 February 1966. The rate of conversion for the new decimal currency was two dollars per Australian pound, or ten Australian shillings per dollar.

Jupiter's Moon Io - The Most Active. Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system. This surprises most people because Io's great distance from the sun and its icy surface make it seem like a very cold place.

The red panda shares the giant panda's rainy, high-altitude forest habitat, but has a wider range. Red pandas live in the mountains of Nepal and northern Myanmar (Burma), as well as in central China. These animals spend most of their lives in trees and even sleep aloft.

Hippocratic Oath: Modern Version. I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

Archaeological discoveries suggest that Egyptian hieroglyphs may be the oldest form of writing. The earliest evidence of an Egyptian hieroglyphic system is believed to be from about 3300 or 3200 BC, and the Egyptians used hieroglyphs for the next 3,500 years.

In 1882 Edison helped form the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, which brought electric light to parts of Manhattan. But progress was slow. Most Americans still lit their homes with gas light and candles for another fifty years. Only in 1925 did half of all homes in the U.S. have electric power.

The average gestation period for giraffe is approximately 15 months (453-464 days). Giraffe give birth in a 'calving ground' and mothers will often return to where they were born to have their own babies.

If you look at the heat capacity of salt water, you will find that it is less than pure water. In other words, it takes less energy to raise the temperature of the salt water 1°C than pure water. This means that the salt water heats up faster and eventually gets to its boiling point first.

A thermobaric weapon is a type of explosive that utilizes oxygen from the surrounding air to generate an intense, high-temperature explosion, and in practice the blast wave typically produced by such a weapon is of a significantly longer duration than that produced by a conventional condensed explosive.

The circumference of Earth at the equator is about 24,902 miles (40,075 km), but from pole-to-pole — the meridional circumference — Earth is only 24,860 miles (40,008 km) around. This shape, caused by the flattening at the poles, is called an oblate spheroid.

The term Down Under is a colloquialism which is variously construed to refer to Australia and New Zealand, or to Australia or New Zealand alone. The term comes from the fact that the countries are in the Southern Hemisphere, 'below' many other countries on the globe.

If you were standing on the Moon, you would always see the Earth in exactly the same position, while the stars and the Sun moved around in the sky. The Moon takes 27.3 days to complete an orbit around the Earth. And this the same amount of time that it takes to turn once on its axis.

A volcano is a landform (usually a mountain) where molten rock erupts through the surface of the planet. In simple terms a volcano is a mountain that opens downward to a pool of molten rock (magma) below the surface of the earth. It is a hole in the Earth from which molten rock and gas erupt.

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The enzyme responsible for breaking down lactose is lactase, an enzyme found on the wall of the intestines. Lactase breaks down lactose (the sugar found in milk) into galactose and glucose.

A cockroach can live for a week without its head. Due to their open circulatory system, and the fact that they breathe through little holes in each of their body segments, they are not dependent on the mouth or head to breathe. The roach only dies because without a mouth, it can't drink water and dies of thirst.

Like lead or cadmium, mercury is a constituent element of the earth, a heavy metal. In pure form, it is known alternatively as "elemental" or "metallic" mercury (also expressed as Hg(0) or Hg0). Mercury is rarely found in nature as the pure, liquid metal, but rather within compounds and inorganic salts.

Pedro Menendez de Aviles hastened across the Atlantic, his sights set on removing the French and creating a Spanish settlement. Menendez arrived in 1565 at a place he called San Augustin (St. Augustine) and established the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.

Flamingos often stand on one leg, the other leg tucked beneath the body. The reason for this behaviour is not fully understood. Recent research indicates that standing on one leg may allow the birds to conserve more body heat, given that they spend a significant amount of time wading in cold water.

Two percent of the water on earth is glacier ice at the North and South Poles. This ice is fresh water and could be melted; however, it is too far away from where people live to be usable. Less than 1% of all the water on earth is fresh water that we can actually use.

The young kangaroo, or joey, is born alive at a very immature stage when it is only about 2 cm long and weighs less than a gram. Immediately after birth it crawls up the mother's body and enters the pouch. The baby attaches its mouth to one of four teats, which then enlarges to hold the young animal in place.

Nearly 40% of small breed dogs live longer than 10 years, but only 13% of giant breed dogs live that long. The average 50-pound dog will live 10 to 12 years. But giant breeds such as great Danes or deerhounds are elderly at 6 to 8 years.

Unlike fish, sharks cannot stop suddenly or swim backwards. A shark's pectoral fins cannot bend upwards like a fish, limiting its swimming ability to forward motion. If a shark needs to move backwards, it uses gravity to fall, not swim backwards.

Greece is a country located in Southern Europe, its mainland located at the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula. Greece is surrounded on the north by Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia and Albania; to the west by the Ionian Sea; to the south by the Mediterranean Sea and to the east by the Aegean Sea and Turkey.

"Fire in the hole" is a warning that an explosive detonation in a confined space is imminent. It originated with miners, who needed to warn their fellows that a charge had been set.

The pigeon is one of only three bird species (the others being flamingos and male emperor penguins) known to produce 'milk' to feed their young. In pigeons the milk starts to be produced in the crop of the parent birds two days before eggs hatch.

The nearest of these countries include Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, which are all island nations or territories in the South-East Asian and Asia-Pacific regions.

Though some fish can breathe on land taking oxygen from air, most of the fish, when taken out of water, suffocate and die. This is because gill arches of fish collapse, when taken out of water, leaving the blood vessels no longer exposed to oxygen in air.

Instead of lungs, insects breathe with a network of tiny tubes called tracheae. Air enters the tubes through a row of holes along an insect's abdomen. The air then diffuses down the blind-ended tracheae. Since the biggest bugs have the longest tracheae, they should need the most oxygen to be able to breathe.

As it says in Mohs scale, the diamond is always at the most top of the scale, being the hardest mineral. There are ten minerals in Mohs scale, talc, gypsum, calcite, fluorite, apatite, orthoclase, quartz, topaz, corundum, and for last and the hardest, diamond.

A jazz musician named Teri Pall invented a version of the cordless phone in 1965 but could not market her invention, as its 2-mile (3.2 km) range caused its radio signals to interfere with aircraft communications. In 1968, she sold her rights to the cordless phone to a manufacturer who modified it for practical use.

They are found on every continent except Antarctica, in every habitat on the planet that contains insect-pollinated flowering plants. Bees are adapted for feeding on nectar and pollen, the former primarily as an energy source and the latter primarily for protein and other nutrients.

The reason why ice forms on the top of lakes and ponds is that once water cools below 39 degrees Fahrenheit, it becomes lighter and less dense the more it cools. This means that water expands as it freezes into ice. As a result, ice takes up more room than the water it was made from.

You might have heard that swallowed gum stays in your stomach for 7 years. That's not true. Though your stomach can't break down a piece of gum the same way it breaks down other food, your digestive system can move it along through normal intestinal activity.

While a brain takes up about twenty percent, or 300, of a resting body's 1300 calories a day, and while it has the potential to burn more, it's estimated that most actual thinking only changes the amount of calories that the brain burns by around twenty to fifty calories per day.

The Panama Canal is not the only water line connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There's a place in Wyoming—deep in the Teton Wilderness Area of the Bridger-Teton National Forest—in which a creek splits in two. Like the canal, this creek connects the two oceans dividing North America in two parts.

Oases support some life forms in extremely arid deserts. The Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia, extends over 9,000,000 km² (over 3,475,000 sq mi) and it covers about 1/4 of the African continent.

Migraines are disabling headaches that most likely stem from problems with the nerves and blood vessels in the head. Migraine headaches typically last from 4-72 hours. They may occur as often as several times a week to only once a year. People who have migraines are called migraineurs.

The disk of the Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter (one light year is about 9.5 x 1015 meters), but only about 1000 light years thick. Our Galaxy contains about 200 billion stars.

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted as the world's time standard at the Washington Meridian Conference in 1884. This conference also established Universal Time, from which the international 24-hour time-zone system grew. This is why all time zones refer back to GMT on the prime meridian.

Male goats, called bucks or billys, usually have a beard. Females are called does or nannys, and immature goats are called kids. Wild goats include the ibex and markhor.

An elephant's trunk is not only long, it is packed with five times more smell receptors than humans. And now research has found that the African elephants have the greatest sense of smell among mammals - even beating dogs including the bloodhound renowned for its sniffing ability.

The Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is the deepest known point in Earth's oceans. In 2010 the United States Center for Coastal & Ocean Mapping measured the depth of the Challenger Deep at 10,994 meters (36,070 feet) below sea level with an estimated vertical accuracy of ± 40 meters.

Motion sickness is a very common disturbance of the inner ear that is caused by repeated motion such as from the swell of the sea, the movement of a car, the motion of a plane in turbulent air, etc. Some people experience nausea and even vomiting when riding in an airplane, automobile, or amusement park ride.

Venus and possibly Uranus are the exceptions to the counterclockwise rotations of the planets . Venus travels around the sun once every 225 Earth days but it rotates clockwise once every 243 days. This pecular combination gives it a day with respect to the sun of 117 Earth days.

Hyperloop is a high-speed transportation system, incorporating reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion that is driven by a combination of linear induction motors and air compressors. It is an entirely new mode of transportation that eliminates all travel complications and objections due to cost, travel time and weather conditions. Traveling as fast as the speed of sound, the Hyperloop will be faster than today's conventional methods of transportation. At about 760 MPH.

The Tropic of Capricorn lies at 23.5° South of the equator and runs through Australia, Chile, southern Brazil (Brazil is the only country that passes through both the equator and a tropic), and northern South Africa.

The entire body can be donated for training or research purposes. For the purpose of transplantation, the following can be harvested: Liver ,Kidneys, Pancreas, Heart, Lungs, Eyes, Skin, Bone, Hands, Face . As our techniques improve, more organs could be brought in to the fold and possibly also stored longer.

Green and blue are colors that are not bright and pleasing to eye. Also they appear clean when stained with blood. It began with wearing white scrubs as it was considered a surgeon is more reputed if his scrubs were stained more. Later as concepts of sepsis and hygiene came along colors changed to green n blue which are neutral to eye and also instil a sense of cleanliness and authority.

The Difference Between Copyright and Patent. Patents refer to an invention, whereas copyrights refer to the expression of an idea, such as an artistic work. They are governed by different rules, so it is important to know which is applicable to your works.

The last series of Olympic medals to be made of solid gold were awarded at the 1912 OlympicGames in Stockholm, Sweden. Olympic Gold medals are required to be made from at least 92.5% silver, and must contain a minimum of 6 grams of gold. All Olympic medals must be at least 60mm in diameter and 3mm thick.

It turns out that when ants find food, they secrete an invisible chemical called "trail pheromone" as they return to the next. This trail leads directly from the nest to the food source. Otherworker ants then follow the trail right to the food . Each worker then reinforces the trail on the way back.

The statue is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

Google Glass is an optical head-mounted display designed in the shape of a pair of eyeglasses. Google Glass displayed information in a smartphone-like hands-free format. Wearers communicated with the Internet via natural language voice commands.

THE FIRST traffic signal was invented by J P Knight, a railway signalling engineer. It was installed outside the Houses of Parliament in 1868 and looked like any railway signal of the time, with waving semaphore arms and red-green lamps, operated by gas, for night use. Unfortunately it exploded, killing a policeman. The accident discouraged further development until the era of the internal combustion engine. Modern traffic lights are an American invention. Red-green systems were installed in Cleveland in 1914. Three-colour signals, operated manually from a tower in the middle of the street, were installed in New York in 1918.

A hot bright star blows up when it runs out of fuel.

Here's why that happens. The force of gravity is always puling the matter in the star toward the center. But in that center, small bits of matter called atoms are always fusing together, making bigger atoms and releasing huge amounts of energy. That energy pushes outward and works against the gravity during the star's life. After many millions of years, the star runs out of small atoms. Then it has no more energy to push outward. The star collapses, and when the matter collides in the center, it explodes.

Today India is the largest diamond cutting and polishing center in the world. It enjoys 60% value share for diamond cutting and polishing, 85% volume share and 92% share of the world market in terms of number of pieces.

The reason dates back to the time of manual typewriters. When first invented , they had keys arranged in an alphabetical order, but people typed so fast that the mechanical character arms got tangled up. So the keys were randomly positioned to actually slow down typing and prevent key jams.

As we get older, the pigment cells in our hair follicles gradually die. When there are fewer pigment cells in a hair follicle, that strand of hair will no longer contain as much melanin and will become a more transparent color like gray, silver, or white as it grows.

Hummingbirds are incredible flyers, with the ruby-throated hummingbird beating its wings 80 times every second, an ability that inspired this blog's name. These tiny birds can fly forwards, hover, and are the only known birds to fly backwards as well.

Traditionally (starting at the 1928 Summer Olympics), Greece enters first, because of its historical status as the progenitor of the Olympics, while the host nation marches last. In the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the Greek flag led the parade, while the Greek team marched in last, as the host nation.

The motorized vacuum cleaner was invented by Hubert Cecil Booth of England in 1901. As Booth recalled decades later, that year he attended "a demonstration of an American machine by its inventor" at the Empire Music Hall in London.

In most marsupials, only the females have a pouch. However, males of the water opossum and the extinct tasmanian tiger (or thylacine) also have a pouch. The males of both the thylacine and water opposum used or use their pouch to keep their genitalia from getting entangled in vegetation.

From west to east, the Yalu River, Paektu Mountain, and the Tumen River divide the two countries. Dandong, in the Liaoning Province of China, is the largest city on the border. On the other side of the river is the city of Sinuiju in North Pyongan Province, North Korea.

The official name of the UK is the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". The name refers to the union of what were once four separate nations: England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (though most of Ireland is now independent). The United Kingdom is made up of: England - The capital is London.