Terror at 10,000ft as Lightning Strikes Jet En Route to Gatwick

British holidaymakers spoke of their terror last night after their plane was forced to make an emergency landing when it was struck by lightning.

Passengers on board the Continental Airlines Boeing 757 bound for Gatwick described a “huge explosion” shortly after taking off from Newark airport, just outside New York.

Rachael Bamber, 23, who was travelling on the plane with her boyfriend Shane Hanlon, said: “About five minutes into the flight there was a huge explosion, a flash of white light outside and a loud bang inside.

“People started screaming. I thought: ‘Oh my God, we are going to crash.’ I screamed out for Shane, and he said we’d probably been struck by lightning.

“Some passengers said they could smell burning, and the girl behind us was in hysterics, screaming and praying and shouting: ‘Get me off the plane! Get me off the plane!’

“A couple of minutes later the pilot announced we had been struck by lightning and that we were going back to make an emergency landing.”

A spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs Newark airport, said no injuries had been reported.

Source: This Is London

A Banana Wall Created From 7,200 Bananas

Stefan Sagmeister’s works are on display at Deitch in NY from January 31 to February 23. The bananas you see here are real, all 7,200 of them on a giant wall. More pictures after the jump.

Image Gallery: Flickr

Horsesurfing

This is horsesurfing and it does exactly what it says on the tin. If you are struggling to get up enough speed, strap yourself to a stallion.

It is the brainchild of stuntman Daniel Fowler-Prime, 28, who came up with the idea with friends when they grew bored of ordinary surfing.

A towing rope is attached to a special saddle so the wakeboarder can be pulled through the water as the horse gallops along the beach.

It allows the boarder to hit waves and fly into the air � where they can pull flips and tricks.

Source: Metro

Germans to blast fish into space

German scientists will today blast 60 baby cichlid fish 260km into space aboard a two-stage rocket to see how the poor blighters react to six minutes of weightlessness.The piscine guinea pigs will lift off from Sweden’s Esrange Space Centre on the 11-metre Texus vessel, Reuters reports. Some will be subjected to a “pure zero G state”, while others will enjoy the trip in a slowly-turning centrifuge.

Experimenters Reinhard Hilbig and Ralf Anken of the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim will later examine video footage of the fish in flight, and probe their “small balance organs”, aka otoliths, to see just how the voyagers coped with their adventure.

Esrange Space Centre project manager, Tomas Hedqvist, explained: “Fish, when they get motion sick, begin tumbling around, swimming in circles and miss their balance. People when they are aboard the space shuttle they have this space motion sickness also. Human beings have blood pressure up in the head when they are weightless and also bones get weak and muscles get small.

“They use fish since it’s much easier to investigate on fish [than] human beings.”

Scientists have previously dispatched fish on parabolic plane rides, but the 20-30 seconds of weightlessness these offer have have proved “too short for clear conclusions”, Hedqvist noted.

Source: TheRegister

We’re not alone…MoD reveal the number of reported UFO sightings in the UK has risen

The number of reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects in the UK has soared in the last year with people calling the Ministry of Defence with concerns about bright white lights, strange triangular-shaped objects and even alien abduction.The MoD took details of 135 events in which mysterious objects were seen in our skies by witnesses including three pilots. Just 97 were reported in 2006.In the last year, there have been reports of a flying saucer in Staffordshire, small stationary aircraft in Derbyshire and a fast moving triangular shaped object in West Yorkshire.

In the West Midlands in December, a woman was terrified when a UFO shone a light into her window. She said the UFO then “shot off fast at first to the North East and then started to move at a slow pace”.

Meanwhile in Duxford, Cambridgeshire, on April 12, a witness reported seeing fifty objects, each with an orange light, assembling in the sky before ascending.

On another occasion, two pilots in different planes flying over Alderney in the Channel Islands reported seeing two bright orange aircrafts and another pilot reported seeing a strange “balloon-like” object when in the air.

Many of the reports refer to bright lights although some callers have insisted they saw “a definite UFO”.

In one case a man calling from Cardiff, Wales, said spaceships had appeared and abducted his dog, car and tent.

The Ministry of Defence has released the file as part of its plan to open its archives on UFO research and sightings. Previously, details of classified reports were kept secret for 30 years.

A spokeswoman said the incidents are recorded but unless a security threat is suspected the Ministry does not investigate further.

“We only investigate if there have been any objects in British air space that may be military,” she said. “Unless there’s evidence of a potential threat we don’t investigate.”

Hilary Porter, from the British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society (BEAMS) said she is not surprised by the rise in the number of UFOs reported to the MoD, as they have been inundated with similar reports.

She said: “There has been a huge influx of UFOs. We have had so many calls from people that have seen these huge formations.

“We have had call after call, from business people right down to ordinary folk in their cars. There have been some very close encounters that have been quite unnerving for the people involved. We have had other people reporting orb sightings.”

But skeptics believe the UFO sightings can be easily explained. Many are helicopters or other human designed craft like weather balloons and satellites, while others are optical illusions or unusual cloud formations.

Source: DailyMail

It is only when world governments say aliens are real and we must all go to “safety camps” for protection that you will need to know these are just secret military craft.

Man threatened to blow up city with TV remote

Australian police declared a state of emergency after a drunken man threatened to blow up half a city with his TV remote control.Geoffrey Fryatt, 57, who lived in a luxury golf resort in Brisbane, was arrested by paramilitary police after terrifying neighbours by threatening to detonate a store of chemicals with the remote.

“One push of the button will blow up half of Brisbane,” he shouted during a stand off with police. Fryatt’s lawyer told the Brisbane District Court that his client lost control after losing much of his life savings in a fraud, reports the Brisbane Times.

“People are genuinely scared of sudden explosions,” the judge said before sentencing him to a year’s probation. “Frightening members of the public with threats of bombs and bomb hoaxes has a much greater impact than it once did.”

Fryatt was concerned the sentence could interrupt his plans to do humanitarian aid work overseas but the judge told him: “Let’s get you right before we send you off to a third world country.”

Source: AnaNova

The Romans carried out cataract ops

Think of the Roman legacy to Britain and many things spring to mind - straight roads, under-floor heating, aqueducts and public baths. But they were also pioneers in the health arena - particularly in the area of eye care, with remedies for various eye conditions such as short-sightedness and conjunctivitis. Perhaps most surprisingly of all is that the Romans - and others from ancient times, including the Chinese, Indians and Greeks - were also able also to carry out cataract operations. The Romans were almost certainly the first to do this in Britain.Surgical skills

Nowadays the procedure can be carried out with the help of ultrasound, but in Roman times technology was rather more basic - needles were inserted into the eye. The sharp end of the needle was used for surgery and the blunt end heated to cauterise the wound. Blows to the head were sometimes used to try and dislodge the cataract.

Dr Nick Summerton, GP and advisor to the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has written a book “Medicine and Health in Roman Britain”. In it, he details how various medical instruments found in Britain indicate that the Romans carried out other advanced procedures, such as head surgery and induced abortions.

“Archaeological finds of eye medicine stamps, representations of eyes together with a sickness report from the Roman fort at Vindolanda suggest that eye diseases were a particular concern within Roman Britain,” said Dr Summerton.

“Interestingly the Roman author Celsus described cataract extraction surgery using a specially pointed needle - and possible cataract needles (specilla) have been found in Britain as well as elsewhere in the Roman Empire.” Detailing the procedure Celsus said: “A needle is to be taken, pointed enough to penetrate, yet not too fine, and this is to be inserted straight through the two outer tunics.

“When the (correct) spot is reached, the needle is to be sloped………and should gently rotate there and little by little.” Dr Summerton explained how eye doctors (oculists) manufactured ointment sticks (collyria) stamped with the ingredients and the name of the eye specialist. These were used to treat a range of eye problems such as conjunctivitis and other inflammatory or infectious eye condition in addition to short-sightedness. A large number of the eye remedies contained antiseptics in one form or another.

“The vinegar lotion of Gaius Valerius Amandus (from a stamp found at Biggleswade) or the copper oxide of Aurelius Polychronius (from a stamp found at Kenchester) would have been very effective antiseptics either in treating conjunctivitis or in preventing any scar on the eye becoming infected while it healed.”

Source: BBC

Whites to become minority in U.S. by 2050.

Non-Hispanic whites will become a minority in the United States by 2050, with immigrants and their children driving 82 percent of U.S. population growth in coming years, a new study said on Monday.
The U.S. population will grow to 438 million in 2050 from 296 million in 2005 if current population trends continue, the Pew Research Center study found.Non-Hispanic whites would account for 47 percent of the total in 2050, it concluded.

By that time, one in every five Americans will be a foreign-born immigrant, compared to one in eight in 2005.

“Of the 117 million people added to the population in this period due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50 million will be their U.S.-born children or grandchildren,” the study said.

While the white population, with its lower fertility rate, ages, the Latino population, the nation’s largest minority, will triple in size. Latinos will be responsible for 60 percent of the population growth until 2050.

They will account for 29 percent of the population, or 128 million in 2050, up from 14 percent now, the study said.

“The number of whites will increase, but only by 4 percent,” said D’Vera Cohn, one of the report’s authors.

The Asian population will almost double in percentage terms, from 5 to 9 percent, while blacks will remain around 13 percent of the total, the report said.

At the same time, the elderly population will more than double as the baby boom generation retires. The number of children and working-age people will grow more slowly.

Almost half of the new immigrants arriving the country will be from Latin American countries, said the other author of the study, Jeffrey S. Passel from the Pew Hispanic Center.

Source: Yahoo

Pepsi’s New Drink Made From ‘All Natural’ Ingredients

It may not be as healthy as a freshly squeezed juice, but Pepsi claim their new drink is made from all natural ingredients.Pepsi Raw, which will initially only be launched in the UK, is the first drink the multi-national cola brand has added to its range in more than ten years.

Pepsi claims the new drink is made from natural ingredients and contains no artificial preservatives, colours, flavourings or sweeteners and that by replacing corn syrup with cane sugar, it has managed to reduce the calorie content of a 300ml bottle from around 120 calories to around 90 calories.

The drink contains apple extract, plain caramel colouring, coffee leaf, tantaric acid from grapes, gum arabic from acacia trees, cane sugar and sparkling water. It is paler in colour and less fizzy than other cola brands.

Source: Times Online

Personal Land, Air & Water Car.

Russian aircraft designer and inventor, Alexander Begak, created a unique aircraft which he named as Evolution. The aircraft is capable of traveling on land, water and air. �This is a universal kind of transportation. It can fly at the height of 4,000 meters above the ground and cover the distance of up to 400 kilometers without additional refueling. Its 30 horse-power motor allows to develop the speed of 160 km/h in the air and 80 km/h on land. An on-board computer controls pilot�s actions,� Alexander Begak told ITAR-TASS.

Unlike heavy aircraft of modern-day aviation, Evolution is easy to transport. It is made of ultra-light coal-plastic and kevlar fibers. The total weight of the aircraft makes up only 60 kilos. The fragile as it may seem construction of the aircraft is protected with the hull made of ultra-strong materials.

The designer presented his invention at Russia�s recent MAKS-2007 air show. Experts highly estimated the novelty. Evolution can quickly find a way out of a critical situation. In case of emergency in the air, the parachute system of the aircraft softens the gliding to the ground. When traveling on the water surface, the pilot can use the inflatable emergency device that will not let Evolution drown.

Alexander Begak was working on his aircraft for two years. Evolution has passed over 100 tests. Specialists from Russia�s major aviation corporations, such as Roskosmos, participated in the research as well. The parts of the aircraft were produced at enterprises of Roskosmos, Sukhoi and Moscow Aviation Institute.

�We want to restore the fleet of ultra-light aviation � the project, which aviators turned down in the 1950s for the benefit of strategic defense goals,� Begak said.

It is worthy of note that ultra-light aircraft can come in handy for non-civil purposes too. Evolution can serve as reconnaissance aircraft invisible to radars due to its plastic equipment. It can patrol frontiers, conduct day and night photography, mapping and monitoring.

Alexander Begak is a designer, pilot and parachute jumper. He developed 15 successful aircraft projects. In 2005 Begak set an absolute record flying an utra-light micro-aircraft of his own construction at the height of 3,701 meters above sea surface.

Source: SenseForFun