Current Affairs

The relative cost of war – sad and astounding.

David McCandless (Information Is Beautiful .net) prepares interesting diagrams to present information and statistics in an accessible way. This one really brings home the cost of the Iraq war when a meaningless figure merely bamboozles the brain.

Incredible photo of 18,000 troops in formation

It took 18,000 troops from Camp Dodge, DesMoines to stand in perfect formation to make this picture of a human Statue of Liberty.

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Tags: liberty, picture, statue, troops
Posted by majordomo@incrediblefacts.com on Saturday, May 9th, 2009 at 11:05 am in Anatomy & Physiology, Bizarre, Cool Stuff, Current Affairs, Entertainment & The Arts, Human Endeavours, Military, Science | No Comments »

The Thatcher Effect – strange, and a bit creepy!

The Thatcher effect, named after the notorious former premiere, whose photograph was first used to demonstrate the effect, refers to the odd way the human brain perceives an upside-down face. The best way to explain is to demonstrate. Have a look at this video, which is a wee bit creepy…

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Link:  OU video demonstration

So the Thatcher effect means that on an upside-down face, we do not notice if the eyes and mouth are turned around 180 degrees (so they are the right way up, but the wrong way up for the picture). Cool.

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Tags: effect, eye, face, mouth, thatcher
Posted by majordomo@incrediblefacts.com on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 5:08 pm in Anatomy & Physiology, Bizarre, Current Affairs, Famous People, Politically Correct | No Comments »

Population Overdrive!

The world’s (human) population at the time of Christ was about 200 million. Now it is nearing 7 billion!

Projections for future population show it is expected to be 9.2 billion by 2050, this represents an increase from 2007 equivalent to the whole population of the world in 1950!

Source: Optimum Population Trust

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Tags: future, population, problem
Posted by majordomo@incrediblefacts.com on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 8:50 am in Countries & Customs, Current Affairs, Human Endeavours, Life & Death, Numbers & Maths | No Comments »

Google story mistakenly prompts $1 billion price fall in United Airlines stock!!

Now this one is hard to believe! On Monday 8th Sept, 2008, automated programs were allowed to wipe more than $1 billion from a company’s value unchecked.

When a website ran a story which merely referenced an old Google news article from 2002 about United Airlines financial problems, the hits to Google boosted the old story’s ranking and it appeared high up in Google’s rankings. This would normally be no problem, but because it appeared highly ranked, the story was then reported like a NEW story by a newspaper website – and this prompted the automated trading programs to dump United Airlines shares in a panic, even though the airline was no longer experiencing any money problems. It is estimated that $1.3 billion was wiped from the company’s value, for no real reason whatsoever!

Source: slashdot , TimesOnline

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Tags: airliine, market, money, share, stocks
Posted by majordomo@incrediblefacts.com on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 7:07 pm in Business and Finance, Current Affairs | No Comments »