the Man Who Saved the World…

50 years ago since october 27 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, second-in-command Vasilli Arkhipov of the Soviet submarine B-59 refused to agree with his Captain’s order to launch nuclear torpedos against US warships and setting off what might well have been a terminal superpower nuclear war. 

The US had been dropping depth charges near the submarine in an attempt to force it to surface, unaware it was carrying nuclear arms. The Soviet officers, who had lost radio contact with Moscow, concluded that World War 3 had begun, and 2 of the officers agreed to ‘blast the warships out of the water’. Arkhipov refused to agree – unanimous consent of 3 officers was required – and thanks to him, we are here to talk about it.

Another interesting nugget of information about him –

:- K19 accident : In July 1961, Arkhipov was appointed deputy commander or executive officer of the new Hotel-class ballistic missile submarine K-19. During its nuclear  accident, he backed Captain Nikolai Zateyev  during the potential mutiny. While assisting with engineering work to  deal with the overheating reactor, he was exposed to a harmful level of  radiation.This incident is depicted in the American film K-19, The Widowmaker.

15 year old child who has been dead for about 500 years…

• The girl in the photo is not any normal living girl but the mummy of a 15 year old child who has been dead for about 500 years. 

She was found in 1999 near Llullaillaco’s 6739 meter summit. An Argentine-Peruvian expedition found the perfectly preserved body and she was nicknamed “La doncella” which means “The maiden”.According to the Inca she was chosen to go and live with the gods. But in reality she was a sacrifice to the Inca Gods and had been brutally killed in the name of religion. 

Scientists say that her organs are intact and its as if she had died just a few weeks ago. From testing the samples of her hair they could determine the type of diet she was on before her death. This lead to the discovery that the Incan fattened their children before killing them. Months or even years before the sacrifice pilgrimage these children were given diets which were those of the elite, consisting of maize and animal proteins.

Judging from the condition of the body, it is believed that she was drugged and left to die in the mountains. It would not have taken much time for her to die due to the high exposure. The Incan high priests took their victims to high mountaintops for sacrifice. As the journey was extremely long and arduous, especially so for the younger victims, coca leaves were fed to them to aid them in their breathing so as to allow them to reach the burial site alive. Upon reaching the burial site, the children were given an intoxicating drink to minimize pain, fear, and resistance, then killed them either by strangulation, a blow to their head or by leaving them to lose consciousness in the extreme cold and die of exposure. 

Many Inca children were offered as sacrifice during or after important events, such as the death of the Sapa Inca(who was the emperor) or during a famine. These sacrifices were known as capacocha. 

unbelievable facts

some of the most mind-blowing facts…

• 1:- The time difference between when  Stegosaurus  and Tyrannosaurus  lived is greater than the time difference between Tyrannosaurus and now.
• 2:-The time difference between when The Waltons aired and now is about as great as the time difference when The Waltons was set (FDR presidency) and when it aired.
• 3:-If you properly shuffle a deck of cards, in all likelihood, the resulting deck has never been seen before in the history of the world.
• 4:- The bushes in Super Mario Bros. were just recolored clouds.
• 5:- There is a blind guy who can ride his bike in traffic using echolocation.
• 6:- There is a species of jellyfish that is immortal (turritopsis nutricula).
• 7:- A small enough animal can fall at terminal velocity without suffering any injury upon impact. An ant (or even a smallish spider) dropped from a tall building will be just fine.
• 8:- If you could fold a piece of paper in half 50 times, its thickness will be 3/4 the distance from the Earth to the Sun (71 million miles).
• 9:- There are more cells of bacteria in your body than there are human cells. (Indeed, there are more cells of E. coli alone than of human cells.)
• 10:- Computer hardware has fulfilled Moore’s Law for 40 years and may continue to do so.
• 11:- The guidance computer from the Apollo 11 mission ran at 1.024 MHz, about 1/6th of the processing power of a TI-83 calculator, and it took human beings to the moon.
• 12:- Humans landed on the moon, and it happened over 40 years ago.
• 13:- When you see most stars, you’re essentially looking hundreds or thousands of years into the past.
• 14:- It takes a photon, on average, 200,000 years to travel from the core of the Sun to the surface, then just a little over 8 minutes from the Sun’s surface to your eyeball, sliding in at 1,100,000,000km/h.
• 15:- If you cut up a hologram, the entire image is retained in each piece.
• 16:- If Earth weren’t tilted on its axis, we wouldn’t have woodgrain, just “tree brown”.
• 17:- Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams missed almost five full baseball seasons (1943, 1944, 1945, 1952 and 1953) fighting as a fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War and still managed to hit 521 home runs.
• 18:- A pencil has the potential to draw a line 38 miles long.
• 19:- During metamorphosis, what happens in a cocoon is that most of the caterpillar gets dissolved by enzymes into a  soup of undifferentiated cells and then the butterfly grows out of the same DNA.
• 20:- In the 200,000 years since Homo Sapiens took her first steps across the African plains, just 57 billion people have ever lived — meaning over 12% of all the people ever born are ‘walking’ the planet at this very moment
• 21:- 1 sperm has 37.5MB of DNA information in it. That means a normal ejaculation represents a data transfer of 1587GB in about 3 seconds
• 22:- Pixar Movies: The A113 Easter Egg, The Pizza Planet truck and the next Pixar movie are hidden in their films
• 23:- The Earth’s diameter is about 3mm larger than its circumference divided by pi [ How could one ever measure the earth to such accuracy? Especially considering that it’s not smooth as glass..]
• 24:- The major religion in Antarctica is Christianity with a total of 8 churches.
• 25:- You live in the past. Use  one hand to touch your nose, and the other to touch one of your feet,  at exactly the same time. You will experience them as simultaneous acts. Clearly  it takes more time for the signal to travel up your nerves from your  feet to your brain than from your nose. The reconciliation is simple:  our conscious experience takes time to assemble, and your brain waits  for all the relevant input before it experiences the “now.” Experiments  have shown that the lag between things happening and us experiencing  them is about 80 milliseconds.
• 26:- Every day, 16% of the searches that occur are ones that Google has never seen before.
• 27:- Canadian amputee Terry Fox ran a marathon every day for 143 days straight, before dying of cancer at age 21. As a result, $500M has been raised in his name for cancer awareness.
• 28:-There is actually a disease called Alien hand syndrome, in which the person with AHS has no conscious control over his ‘alien hand’ and will blurt things out like: “I swear I’m not doing this”.
• 29:- The Emerald Cockroach Wasp disables the escaping reflex of cockroaches, leads them to its burrow by pulling their antennae, lays a 2mm white egg into their abdomen and buries them. Then the wasp larvae eat the roaches organs keeping them alive for 8 days until they enter pupal stage. Eventually adult wasps emerge from the cockroaches abdomen.

• 30:- Of the almost 193 current member states  of the United Nations, the British have, at some point in history, invaded and established a military presence in 171 of them.
• Science knowledge and amazing facts perhaps u not know..

India’s first rocket was brought on cycle

• 
• In 1963 Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched its first rocket from Thumba Equatorial Launching Station. 

   

  The station had a single launch pad in the midst of coconut plantations. A local Catholic Church the St Mary Magadelene’s Church served as the main office for the scientists. The bishop’s house was converted into a workshop. A Cattle shed became the laboratory in which young Indian scientists like Abdul Kalam Azad worked and the rocket was transported to lift-off pad ON A BICYCLE. The second rocket, which was launched sometime later, was a little bigger and heavier and it was transported in a bullock cart for the lift off.

   

   

  Over the next 12 years, India built and launch more than 350 sounding rockets

general knowledge

Magnetic Hill in ladakh…

Magnetic Hill near Leh in Ladakh

Magnetic Hill is a gravity hill located near Leh in Ladakh, India. The  hill is alleged to have magnetic properties strong enough to pull cars  uphill and force passing aircraft to increase their altitude in order to  escape magnetic interference.

The “magnetic hill” is located on the Leh-Kargil-Srinagar national  highway, about 50 km from Leh, at a height of 11,000 feet above sea  level. On its south side flows the Indus, which originates in Tibet and  goes to Pakistan. The so-called magnetic hill has become a popular stop  for domestic tourists on car journeys.

In reality, the effect is an optical  illusion and there is no magnetic disturbance in the area at all.

According to reports, the magnetic effect results entirely from the  optical illusion and not out of any magnetic disturbances. Located on  the Leh-Kargil-Srinagar national Highway, the magnetic hill is about  fifty kilometers from Leh. Magnets or no magnets, the place holds a  great attraction, especially for the nature enthusiasts.