THE ROCK ISLANDS OF PALAU

The Rock Islands of Palau
By Kaushik, Amusing Planet, 29 October 2013.

Palau is an archipelago of about 250 islands, located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is its own country - the Republic of Palau, although geographically it is part of the larger island group of Micronesia. For over 30 years it was a part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific under United States administration. It finally gained its total independence in 1994.

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Palau is a beautiful tropical paradise, and one of the true unspoiled destinations on the planet. Most of the 100-plus islands are small low-lying coral islands, ringed by barrier reefs and uninhabited. The country's population of around 21,000 is spread across 250 islands forming the western chain of the Caroline Islands.

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The most famous of Palau’s sights are the Rock Islands - a group of green islands covered in foliage with a few bright white sandy beaches. Formed by ancient coral reefs, the bases of these limestone formations have been slowly eroded over millennia into quirky mushroom shapes. There are between 250 to 400+ islands in the group, according to different sources, with an aggregate area of 47 square kilometres and a height up to 207 meters.

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The islands are for the most part uninhabited and are famous for their beaches, blue lagoons and the peculiar umbrella-like shapes of many of the islands themselves. The Rock Islands and the surrounding reefs make up Palau's popular tourist sites such as Blue Corner, Blue hole, German Channel, Ngermeaus Island and the famed Jellyfish Lake, one of the many Marine lakes in the Rock Islands that provides home and safety for several kinds of stingless jellyfish found only in Palau. It is the most popular dive destination in Palau. In fact, Palau offers some of the best and most diverse dive sites on the planet. From wall diving to high current drift dives, from Manta Rays to shark feeds and from shallow and colourful lagoons to brilliantly decorated caves and overhangs.

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Although presently uninhabited, the islands were once home to Palauan settlements, and Palauans continue to use the area and its resources for cultural and recreational purposes. The islands contain a significant set of cultural remains relating to an occupation over some five thousand years that ended in abandonment. Archaeological remains of former human occupation in caves and villages, including rock art and burials, testifies to seasonal human occupation and use of the marine ecosystem, dating back to 3,100 BC and extending over some 2,500 years.

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Article Sources: Wikipedia, UNESCO

Video 1: The Rock Islands, Palau

Video 2: Jellyfish Lake, Rock Islands, Palau

Top image: Rock Islands Southern Lagoon (Palau). Source: UNESCO.

[Post Source: Amusing Planet. Edited. Top image, videos and some links added.]

USS ZUMWALT: THE UNITED STATES' NEWEST AND DEADLIEST DESTROYER

The US Navy's Most Intimidating Creation Yet Just Hit The Water
By Geoffrey Ingersoll, Business Insider, 29 October 2013.

The US Navy just put its newest destroyer, the USS Zumwalt, into the sea.

Constructed by General Dynamics with weapons systems and software from other companies, the Zumwalt "DDG-1000" Guided Missile Destroyer is like the iPhone 6 of naval ships.

Its "tumblehome" hull avoids enemy radar while composite armour absorbs it, advanced weaponry strikes from more than 100 miles offshore, Linux-based networking in the bridge allows for purchase and implementation of off-the-shelf software, and an all-electric drive system keeps her purring quietly like a well-fed tiger.

Lucky for America's rivals, at about 87 percent completion, the Zumwalt is not quite ready to start making the rest of the globe flinch yet.

The USS Zumwalt hit the water Oct. 29 and is due to start patrolling by 2014.

The Zumwalt was originally estimated to cost about US$3.8 billion, but so much technology was crammed on-board that its cost has nearly doubled, and after the first three are built, production will stop.

With all the new weapons systems the Navy wants aboard the Zumwalt, planners installed a power plant that could provide power to 78,000 homes (around 78 megawatts).

Such power could enable the first uses of the Navy's magnetic rail gun project, which combines magnetic currents and electric fields to fire projectiles at 7 times the speed of sound.

Computers and automation have reduced the crew to a bare bones 158. (By comparison, the USS Barry Arleigh-Burke Class requires 210 sailors.)

Sean Gallagher of Arstechnica referred to the Linux-powered bridge as a "floating data centre" and wrote that it was akin to the bridge on Star Trek's Starship Enterprise.

On the outside, the USS Zumwalt not only looks cool (rule #1), but it's a full 100 feet longer than existing classes of destroyer.

According to the Navy's press release, "The shape of the superstructure and the arrangement of its antennas significantly reduce the ship's radar cross section, making the ship less visible to enemy radar at sea."

The hull of the ship is made of a composite material which effectively absorbs radar waves.

Construction of the ship required General Dynamics to build a special US$40 million "Ultra Hall" to hold the pieces.

The Zumwalt's weaponry is tailored for land attack and close-to-coast dominance and will also have a sensor and weapons suite optimized for littoral warfare and for network-centric warfare.

BAE Systems Land and Armaments developed the ship's advanced gun system (AGS), which will be able to fire advanced munitions and the Zumwalt Class vessels have two landing spots for helicopters.

The ship also has space for two medium-lift helicopter systems.

And finally, the new Long Range Attack Projectile (LRAP) - The DDG 1000 will be armed with tactical tomahawks, standard missile SM-3s, and the evolved SeaSparrow missile.

With the "tumblehome" hull reducing drag and radar detection, along with such advanced weapons, it's like the Zumwalt is the Navy SEAL of ships - always operating under cover of night, a ninja of the sea.

Video: DDG 1000 Zumwalt-Class Guided Missile Destroyer

Video: YouTube via Gizmodo

More information:

1. Zumwalt-class destroyer
2. USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000)
3. Zumwalt-Class Destroyer: Seapower for the Missions of the Future
4. Infographic: Zumwalt-Class Destroyer Program

Top image: An artist rendering of the Zumwalt class destroyer DDG 1000. The Zumwalt has a peripheral vertical launch system (PVLS), which consists of 20 four-cell PVLS situated round the perimeter of the deck. Credit: U.S. Navy/Wikimedia Commons.

[Source: Business Insider. Edited. Video and some links added.]

TOP 10 FAMOUS HISTORICAL SITES YOU DIDN'T KNOW WERE (REPORTEDLY) HAUNTED

Top 10 Famous Historical Sites You Didn’t Know Were Haunted
By Gregory Myers, Toptenz, 30 October 2013.

There are many locations that people claim to be haunted by some sort of other world spirit or presence. Many ghosts are said to hang out in old abandoned buildings, or lonely stretches of road that are rarely travelled. However, it appears some ghosts try to distract themselves from their unrequited afterlife by getting as much attention as possible. These ghosts choose to hang out in much more famous places, especially those frequented by tourists.

Unsurprisingly, some entrepreneurial people see this as a great opportunity to create a tour business and make money. In many cases, like a few of those below, the local government itself takes advantage of the haunted reputation.

10. Little Bighorn

The site at Little Bighorn has had reports of hauntings for a very long time now. The Crow were the first to report it, believing that when the flag was lowered at night, the dead were now able to walk the area; when the flag was raised in the morning, the dead went back to rest again. Today the stories still persist, most of them centring on apparitions of the late General George Custer. When people see him, he is supposedly in full uniform and the look in his eyes is said to be very sad. Those who see him report an incredible feeling of dread come over them, and claim to have horrible chills. The guides at the museum believe that the dread is because Custer hasn’t accepted his death and was traumatized by losing. Some would argue that if the apparition is real, the dread accompanying his presence is due to Custer being kind of a jerk.

9. Valley of the Kings

The Valley of the Kings contains ancient treasures and artefacts, so of course they were picked through by governments, archaeologists and people hoping to make a quick buck. The locals who guard the area feel that this has upset those who are buried in the tombs and so, in the ’60s, started claiming that all sorts of strange paranormal activities were occurring. They heard chariot wheels and angry voices, marching footsteps, and all sorts of other weird sounds. Their petitions to the government to investigate were unsuccessful, and they believe that the spirits need to be appeased by writing to them in hieroglyphics that their mummies are safe in a museum.

Of course, some people have decided to take advantage of the supposed haunting, and organize tours. “To your left, you’ll see horrible harbingers of death and destruction. No flash photography please: you don’t want to make them any angrier than they already are.”

8. Cincinnati Music Hall

Part of the Cincinnati Music Hall was built over a potter’s field, and many times while renovation was being done, human bones were found. Knowing this, it is unsurprising perhaps that many people have reported ghostly phenomenon in the building. Those who work in the building overnight claim to have felt the presence of ghosts in the building, and forestall protests by explaining that they usually only show up around three in the morning. You don’t need to be too alarmed, however, as at least one of them believes the ghosts to be quite friendly. As with many supposedly haunted places, you can take a guided tour for a price. The tour lasts about two hours, and you are encouraged to bring along your own ghost hunting gear.

7. Paris Catacombs

A long time ago, Paris needed more room to store bodies so they started putting them underground, eventually creating the catacombs of today. These catacombs are riddled with bodies, and have a portion open for tourists to “enjoy.” The place is supposed to be incredibly haunted, with sightings of orbs, apparitions and ghosts tagging along when tourists come to check the place out. Some also believe people have tried to explore blocked off sections, and eventually became part of the ghostly makeup of the area, much like The Overlook Hotel in the movie The Shining. There are also many videos online of people who claim to have proof of ghosts in the catacombs.

6. Dragsholm Castle

The Dragsholm Castle is situated in Denmark and was built all the way back in the 12th century. The castle was home to many different people of noble descent, and like many old buildings has a long history of haunting. Specifically this castle is said to have three separate and distinct ghostly apparitions. There is a Grey Lady who is apparently pretty shy and doesn’t show up very much. Some stories claim she had a toothache cured while at the castle, though we don’t know why that would make her want to come back.

There is a White Lady as well, and many believe that she died inside the castle, imprisoned by a father who was angry at her for dating someone of a lower class. A skeleton is said to have been found in the castle in the 1930’s similar to the one allegedly worn by the ghost.

The final ghost is an earl who was once imprisoned inside the castle walls, said to have completely lost his mind due to isolation. People claim to see him riding around on a horse and carriage.

5. The Kremlin

According to legend, the Kremlin is an incredibly haunted site, filled to the brim with all the blood and anguish of the Russian people over the years, the site of so many events with long-lasting importance. The stories claim several unique apparitions, with people allegedly seeing Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin and Ivan the Terrible. People report seeing Ivan’s shadow and hearing him walking around the bell tower at night. Some people have claimed to see a ghost of Lenin, but some reports of his ghost came months before he actually died. Stalin, however, is supposedly the boldest of these ghosts and is seen all the time, usually preceded by a feeling of great cold.

4. Grand Paradi Towers

The Grand Paradi Towers in Mumbai is supposedly the site of a serious haunting, and is full of other worldly spirits. The site freaks people out mainly because it is the place of a great many suicides. In the past decade or so, seven suicides have been reported in the building, which has given pause to many. When those currently living there are asked how they feel about the possible haunting, they refuse to comment, perhaps not wanting to draw attention from the spirits.

3. Madame Tussauds

A ghost hunter visited the Las Vegas Madame Tussauds and claims to have found evidence of the paranormal there, or at least what a ghost hunter usually considers to be evidence of the paranormal. He investigated after guards at the museum reported strange experiences late at night. The guards claimed to have heard laughter, glasses clinking with each other, and other strange phenomenon.

The most chilling is one lower part of the museum they refuse to enter, because every time they try they feel like they are being pushed away by hands that feel cold as ice. The ghost hunter speculates that perhaps the spirits are coming back to look at their waxy doppelgangers, to remember what they once looked like.

2. The Devil’s Tree

The Devil’s Tree in New Jersey is a fairly recent legend. The story goes that, in the 1970’s, a man murdered two girls by the tree. After the corpses of the girls were brought back to the scene in a grisly display, people claimed they could hear the girl’s screams. The tree has been the site of a horrible haunting, filled with a malignant air, ever since.

Many people have claimed various strange experiences by the tree, and although the tree appears to have experienced many attempts to have it cut down, all have thus far failed. Supposedly, it is guarded by some sort of spirit, driving a black pickup truck, that will chase you away, disappearing once it has chased you far enough. Apparently, this ghostly guy is guarding a portal to Hell.

1. The Great Wall Of China

The Great Wall of China is one of the most historic sites in the world, as well as one of the most haunted. Many people believe that the ghosts are the spirits of the millions who died while building the wall. People’s experiences run the gamut from possibly coincidental things, like headaches and nausea, to stranger things like feeling an unseen force grabbing them or slapping them around. Others have gone as far as to claim seeing ghosts. Locals believe that, if people trespass on the part of the wall where General Xue is buried, they will incur the wrath of the spirits and completely lose their mind.

Top image: The Great Wall of China, via Haunted World Locations.

[Source: Toptenz. Edited. Top image added.]

10 MOST BIZARRE ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS IN HISTORY

10 Most Bizarre Animal Experiments In History
By Marc V., Listverse, 30 October 2013.

Throughout history, scientists have experimented with animals in their quest for knowledge. While most of these experiments seemed logical, a few bordered on the downright insane. Some were so mind-bogglingly weird that we can’t help but ask, “What on Earth were they thinking?”

10. Two-Headed Dogs

While reading like something out of an X-Files plot, there are tons of well-documented records of scientists who successfully grafted one dog’s head onto another dog. American scientist Charles Guthrie managed to achieve this feat in the early 1900s. His creation “lasted” for 26 minutes. During the Cold War, Russian scientists A.G. Konevsky and Vladimir Demikhov successfully replicated Guthrie’s experiments in separate incidents. As Konevsky’s operation was accidental (he wanted to perform a heart transplant instead), it was Demikhov who gained worldwide notoriety for his two-headed dogs. He improved the grafting process and was able to complete 20 operations. Of the 20 subjects, one survived up to a month.

9. Male Turkeys Were Aroused By Severed Heads

In the 1960s, Pennsylvania researchers Martin Schein and Edgar Hale observed that male turkeys mated with female turkey models as eagerly as they would the real thing. Intrigued, the duo placed the male turkeys in a series of even weirder experiments. They hypothesized that the male turkeys were erotically focused on the female’s head. They slowly removed the model’s body parts one by one until only a head on a stick remained. Nevertheless, the male turkeys remained aroused by the head, and even preferred it over a headless body. Now here’s where the experiment truly gets bizarre. The researchers got a real severed female turkey’s head and placed it on a stick. They also put up a dried male head, a two-year-old withered female head, and a head made of plain balsa wood. Undaunted, the male turkeys tried to mate with every single one of them.

8. Monkey Head Transplant

American scientist Robert White is credited as the first man who successfully performed a “true head transplant.” While Demikhov grafted an extra head onto a living dog’s body, White went the extra mile and managed to transplant a severed monkey head on another specimen’s decapitated body in the ’70s. Prior to that operation, White had successfully attached a dog’s brain onto another dog and kept a monkey’s detached brain alive outside its body. From an interview with White himself, the decapitated monkey revived after it was reattached to the body and even tried to bite a member of White’s team. However, the monkey couldn’t move its body as there was no known method yet of re-attaching the brain to the spinal cord. The monkey lived for a day and a half before expiring. For reasons undisclosed, White never got the chance to try his method on human beings. However, present-day scientists have said that we may see the first human head transplant in this century.

7. Franken Kitty

German scientist Karl August Weinhold believed that the human brain was like a battery that was attached to several “wires,” namely the nervous system. This real-life Dr. Frankenstein set out to prove his point in 1817, when he performed an experiment on a kitten. In his own words, Weinhold provided explicitly gory details of his experiment:

“[The] animal lost all life, all sensory functions, voluntary muscles movement, and eventually its pulse. Afterward, I filled both cavities with the aforementioned amalgam (zinc and silver). For almost 20 minutes, the animal got into such a life-tension that it raised its head, opened its eyes...finally got up with obvious effort, hopped around, and sank down exhausted.”

While Weinhold’s experiment may be considered insane and unethical today, this was during the time when the science community was obsessed with reviving the dead. In fact, a year after Weinhold’s experiment, Mary Shelley released her wildly popular classic novel Frankenstein.

6. The Lazarus Project

In the 1930s, University of California researcher Robert Cornish believed he could revive dead organisms as long as they hadn’t suffered major organ damage. He asphyxiated four fox terriers, which he all named “Lazarus” (the biblical character whom Jesus brought back to life) and placed them in a seesaw-like machine. The odd contraption circulated the corpse’s blood by moving up and down while Cornish administered a cocktail of adrenaline and anticoagulants.

He failed to revive his first two subjects but succeeded with the last two. Although blinded and severely brain-damaged, Lazarus 3 and 4 lived for months at Cornish’s home. The researcher became so infamous that the university kicked him off the campus and he had to continue his work in a makeshift lab near his home. In 1947, Cornish reappeared with a new resurrection machine and looked for a human volunteer. A prisoner on death row, Thomas McMonigle volunteered for the project, but state officials were afraid that they might have to free him after the execution and declined Cornish’s request. The disheartened researcher went home and lived the rest of his life selling toothpaste.

5. Shock The Puppy Experiment

In a follow-up to the infamous Milgram experiment, researchers C.L. Sheridan and R.G. King came up with an even more brutal version. They hypothesized that some of the subjects suspected that their human victim was faking the electric shocks, so they decided to replace the victim with a live puppy. The shocks administered were harmless - but enough to elicit responses from the puppy. After the tests, the researchers compiled their data and reached a shocking conclusion: Of the 26 subjects (13 men, 13 women), all the women administered the shocks up to the highest level. On the other hand, 50 percent of the men refused to administer any more shocks they perceived as severe.

4. An Elephant High On LSD

Oklahoma researchers Louis Jolyon West and Chester M. Pierce wanted to find out would happen when an elephant tripped on acid. On August 1962, the researchers went to the local zoo and found a suitable subject named Tusko. Zoo director Warren Thomas fired an LSD-filled syringe bullet right into Tusko’s rump. The syringe contained 297 milligrams of LSD, which was 3,000 times the normal dose for a human. The researchers disclosed that they wanted to see if LSD would induce musth - a temporary aggression that male elephants experience - so they opted for the absurdly high dose.

The result was less than spectacular: Almost immediately, Tusko moved around erratically. And then he promptly keeled over and died. The disastrous experiment made headlines and forced the researchers to search for any meaningful lessons. Thomas suggested that the LSD could be used to cull large and troublesome herds. Four months after the debacle, the scientists stated the obvious in a scientific journal: Elephants were highly sensitive to LSD.

3. Dolphin Gets Intimate With A Human

In 1967, dolphin researcher John Lilly published his controversial book The Mind of The Dolphin, which detailed his assistant Margaret Howe’s time living and teaching a male dolphin named Peter to speak. The pair lived together in a flooded house for six months. During that time, Howe played with Peter and taught him to speak basic English words. After a while, Peter became more amorous and repeatedly tried to mate with Margaret. Finally, she acquiesced to his sexual demands and stroked Peter’s “dolphinhood” with her hands and feet; she even did this when other people were present. Toward the end, she concluded that Peter trusted her enough to be intimate with her. The strange experiment did nothing to bolster Lilly’s reputation; federal funding for his research stopped when authorities discovered he also gave dolphins LSD to make them talk.

2. Jellyfish In Space

Dr. Dorothy Spangenberg, a scientist with the Eastern Virginia Medical School, wanted to know what effects gravity would have on future humans born in space. And what better way to find out than to launch a few thousand jellyfish there first (seriously, no one had a better idea?). On June 5, 1991, she and her team packed 2,478 baby jellyfish alongside the crew of the Columbia space shuttle for their experiment. The jellyfish adapted well in orbit, and their numbers soon reached 60,000.

Unfortunately, when they were brought back to Earth, these space-borne jellyfish were noted to have greater “pulsing abnormalities” than usual, which was a fancy way of saying they had vertigo because they couldn’t adapt to the gravity. The scientists concluded that humans, who share similar gravity-sensing appendages with the jellyfish, would likely experience the same problems if they were also born in space.

1. Disembodied Dog Head

In 1928, Russian scientist Sergei Brukhonenko shocked his fellow Soviet scientists when he presented his bizarre life-support machine. He claimed his “autojector” machine made it possible to keep a head alive through continuous blood circulation while the rest of the body went through intensive surgery. To prove his point, he presented a film of what appeared to be a disembodied dog’s head being tested to various stimulations. Amazingly, the head blinked when he shone light in its eyes and flinched when he banged a hammer on the table nearby. Finally, he fed the head a piece of cheese, which went through the oesophageal tube. We should note that this experiment has been hotly debated and was never independently verified.

[Source: Listverse. Edited.]