The Dodo Bird's Native Region

 This famously extinct avian species may not be trotting around our planet anymore, but the dodo has certainly left an ecological imprint. If you've ever wondered just where the dodo bird disappeared from, the answer is Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation known for waterfalls and lush landscapes. Sailors claimed to have found white dodos on the nearby French-owned island known as Réunion, but it is now believed that they mistook a species of large, flightless ibis for a new species of dodo bird.

Japan's Native Religion: Shintoism

 

Shinto is a Japanese religion that dates back to the eighth century. Scholars of religion classify it as an East Asian religion, yet it is commonly referred to as Japan's indigenous religion and a natural religion by its adherents. Scholars refer to its believers as Shintoists, but they seldom use that label themselves. Shinto is not governed by a central authority, and its practitioners are quite diverse.

Shinto is a polytheistic religion centered on the kami, celestial beings that are said to pervade everything. Shinto is considered animistic because of the connection between the kami and the natural world. At kamidana domestic shrines, family shrines, and jinja public shrines, the kami are worshipped. The latter are staffed by kannushi priests who manage food and drink offerings to the particular kami enshrined at that place. This is done to promote peace between people and kami, as well as to ask for their blessing. Kagura dances, rites of passage, and seasonal celebrations are all typical rituals. Public shrines also provide religious accoutrements, such as amulets, to followers of the faith and assist divination. Shinto lays a strong emphasis on maintaining cleanliness, which is achieved primarily via cleansing rituals such as ceremonial washing and bathing, particularly before worship. Although the deceased are thought capable of becoming kami, there is no focus on precise moral rules or afterlife beliefs. The religion does not have a singular founder or theological document, although it does exist in a variety of local and regional forms.

Shinto is largely practiced in Japan, where there are about 100,000 public shrines, although it is also practiced in other countries. It is Japan's biggest religion in terms of numbers, with Buddhism coming in second. The majority of the country's population participates in both Shinto and Buddhist events, particularly festivals, indicating a popular idea in Japanese society that various faiths' beliefs and practices do not have to be mutually incompatible. Shinto elements have also been adopted into a number of contemporary Japanese religious groupings.

Paul Newman's Cool Hand Luke

 If you are a fan of Paul Newman's movies, you are probably familiar with the iconic scene in the film "Cool Hand Luke," where Newman's character, Luke Jackson, eats 50 hard-boiled eggs to win a bet. The wager happens when Cool Hand Luke brags to his fellow inmates that he can eat 50 hard-boiled eggs in one hour. His boast is met with one of the more famous lines in the movie: "Nobody can eat 50 eggs." But Cool Hand Luke manages to pull it off, and win the bet. When Paul Newman was asked how many eggs he consumed while filming the scene, he revealed to a reporter, "I never swallowed an egg."

Ulysses S. Grant

 The 18th U.S. president, Ulysses S. Grant, is featured on the obverse of the United States fifty-dollar bill ($50). President Grant is the only person depicted on the front of circulating U.S. paper currency that does not have a last name ending with the letter "N." The faces on every U.S. bill in circulation include five American presidents and two founding fathers. They are as follows: George Washington ($1), Thomas Jefferson ($2), Abraham Lincoln ($5), Alexander Hamilton ($10), Andrew Jackson ($20), Ulysses S. Grant ($50), and Benjamin Franklin ($100).

United Arab Emirates

 

The Burj Al Arab is a five-star luxury hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is one of the world's tallest hotels, despite the fact that 39 percent of its overall height is non-occupable space. It is managed by the Jumeirah hotel company. Burj Al Arab is located on an artificial island 280 meters (920 feet) off Jumeirah Beach, with a private curving bridge connecting it to the mainland. The structure's form is intended to imitate a ship's sail. At a height of 689 feet above earth, it contains a helipad near the roof.

Chicago Beach was the original name for the coastal region where the Burj Al Arab and Jumeirah Beach Hotel are located. The hotel is situated on a reclaimed island 920 feet offshore from the previous Chicago Beach Hotel's beach. The name of the location comes from the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, which used to weld massive floating oil storage tanks known as Kazzans on the site.

Murray & Roberts, now Concor and Al Habtoor Engineering, a South African construction company, built the hotel. The interior designs were led and produced by KCA International's Khuan Chew and John Coralan, and the project was completed by the UAE-based Depa Group. The structure first opened its doors on December 1, 1999.

Ford Lincoln

  On February 4, 1922, Lincoln Motor Company was acquired by Ford Motor Company for $8 million. Lincoln became the luxury vehicle division of the American auto company Ford. Henry Ford had previously designed several luxury vehicles within the Ford name but wanted to have a standalone luxury brand to make them under. Thus, the Lincoln brand was born and has been Ford's exclusive luxury brand ever since. Lincoln Motor Company was founded in 1917 by Henry M. Leland, who named it after Abraham Lincoln, stating that Lincoln was the first President for whom he ever voted (1864).

Finland's Wife-Carrying Sport

 

The International Wife Carrying Championships are held every year in the small village of Sonkajaervi, Finland. Husbands must carry their spouses along a course with several obstacles during this tournament.

The track is 250 meters long and includes many terrestrial obstacles as well as a 1-meter deep swimming pool.

Carrying can be done in a variety of ways, including the standard piggyback, the fireman's carry (over the shoulder), or the Estonian-style carry (wife upside-down on his back with her legs over the neck and shoulders).

Also known as Eukonkanto, it has its origins in Finland. There are legends about a guy named Herkko Rosvo-Ronkainen (aka Ronkainen the Robber). In the late 1800s, this man was a bandit who resided in a forest and roamed around with his gang of thieves creating havoc in the communities. There are three theories as to why/how this sport was formed, based on what has been discovered. To begin with, Rosvo-Ronkainen and his gang were suspected of stealing food and kidnapping women from villages in the region where he resided, then fleeing with the ladies on their backs (hence the "wife" or woman carrying). The second theory proposes that young men take women from nearby villages and force them to marry, frequently women who are already married. These spouses were also carried on the backs of the young men, a practice referred to as "wife theft." Finally, there's the theory that Rosvo-Ronkainen taught his robbers to be "faster and stronger" by making them carry large, heavy bags on their backs, which led to the creation of this sport. Despite the fact that the sport is sometimes mocked, athletes treat it with the same seriousness as any other sport.

Pepsi-Cola

 In the small town of New Bern, North Carolina, a local pharmacist named Caleb Bradham devised the original formula of what would become Pepsi-Cola. When Pepsi was founded in 1898, it was known as “Brad’s Drink,” a staple of Bradham's pharmacy that was believed to improve digestion and ease an upset stomach. As his beverage gained popularity, Bradham decided to rename it, eventually settling on "Pepsi-Cola." Alluding to its humble roots in New Bern, “Born in the Carolinas” became an official trademark and enduring slogan of Pepsi Cola.

Winston Churchill

 

The "British Bulldog" was Winston Churchill's nickname. Churchill resembled a bulldog with his jowly face and stocky frame, but he was also known for refusing to give up the battle against the Nazis. He was known as the "British Bulldog" by the Soviets.

Winston Churchill was a British leader who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, and again from 1951 to 1955, during World War II. Churchill was a Sandhurst-educated soldier, a Nobel Prize-winning writer and historian, a prolific painter, and one of the longest-serving politicians in British history. He was best known for his wartime leadership as Prime Minister, but he was also a Sandhurst-educated soldier, a Nobel Prize-winning writer and historian, a prolific painter, and one of the longest-serving politicians in British history. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964, save for two years between 1922 and 1924, when he represented five seats. He was a member of the Conservative Party for the majority of his career, however he was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924. He was an economic liberal and imperialist.

Churchill was born in Oxfordshire to a rich, aristocratic family of mixed English and American ancestry. In 1895, he enlisted in the British Army and served in British India, the Anglo-Sudan War, and the Second Boer War, garnering notoriety as a war journalist and author of books on his experiences. In 1900, he was elected as a Conservative MP, but in 1904, he switched to the Liberals.

During his "wilderness years" in the 1930s, while he was out of office, Churchill spearheaded the charge for British rearmament to fight the increasing menace of militarism in Nazi Germany. He was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty at the onset of World War II. He succeeded Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister in May 1940.

Churchill, widely regarded as one of the most important people of the twentieth century, remains popular in the United Kingdom and the Western world, where he is viewed as a victorious wartime commander who played a key part in protecting Europe's liberal democracy against the development of fascism. He's also known for being a social reformer. He has, however, been chastised for various wartime events, most notably the aerial bombing of German towns and his government's reaction to the Bengal famine, as well as his imperialist ideas, including racial remarks.

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman

 They were the Hollywood "it" couple of the 1990s. When A-list actor Tom Cruise made the film "Days of Thunder," he fell in love with his little-known love interest, Australian actress Nicole Kidman, and the couple married on Christmas Eve in 1990. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman fascinated Hollywood and dominated magazine covers during their marriage. They even made two more acclaimed movies together: 1992's "Far and Away" and 1999's "Eyes Wide Shut." Cruise filed for divorce from Kidman in February 2001, while she was unknowingly pregnant. The pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.

Sphygmomanometer

 

A sphygmomanometer, also known as a blood pressure monitor or blood pressure gauge, is a blood pressure measuring device that consists of an inflatable cuff that is used to collapse and then release the artery under the cuff in a controlled manner, as well as a mercury or aneroid manometer to measure the pressure. When employing the auscultatory approach, manual sphygmomanometers are utilized in conjunction with a stethoscope.

An inflating cuff, a measurement device (the mercury manometer, or aneroid gauge), and an inflation mechanism (either a manually driven bulb and valve or an electrically operated pump) make up a sphygmomanometer.

In the year 1881, Samuel Siegfried Karl Ritter von Basch created the sphygmomanometer. In 1896, Scipione Riva-Rocci created a more user-friendly version. In 1901, pioneering neurosurgeon Dr. Harvey Cushing took an example of Riva-gadget Rocci's to the US, modified it and promoted it among the medical community. Following the discovery of "Korotkoff sounds" by Russian physician Nikolai Korotkov in 1905, diastolic blood pressure measurements were added. While working at The Life Extension Institute, which performed insurance and job physicals, William A. Baum established the Baumanometer brand in 1916. Donald Nunn created the first completely automated oscillometric blood pressure cuff in 1981.