Mona Lisa Recreated With Coffee:

Mona Lisa – one of the world’s most famous paintings, has been recreated using 3604 cups of coffee and 564 pints of milk! Read the facts!

This artwork took eight fantastic people three hours to complete and it measures six meters high and four meters wide.

The different shades were created by varying amounts of milk added to the coffee to create the different sepia shades of the painting.

Coffee Lisa was created for The Rocks Aroma Festival in Sydney (Australia) and was seen by over 130,000 people who attended the ‘one-day coffee-lovers’ event.

“Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, is the 16th-century portrait painted in oil by Leonardo Da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance. The work is owned by the French government and hangs in the Musee du Louvre in Paris, France, with the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. It measures 77×53 centimeters and has prompted debate for years over the reason for her famously enigmatic smile.”

It was only a matter of time before this was done really, she’s been recreated from most other things like toast, ASCII, a garden lawn and even from Lego!

Funky Facts About Turkeys:

If you are looking for facts about turkeys, look no further, here are some interesting turkey facts that will have you gobbling for more!

1. A turkey is the relation of the grouse.
2. In Latin, turkeys are known as Meleagris.
3. The turkey is classed as poultry.
4. The domesticated turkey is descended from the wild turkey.
5. It has been a domesticated bird for over 2,000 years.
6. A male turkey is a stag. The female is a hen, and their chicks are known as poult.
7. A turkey can weigh up to 20kg.
8. The flesh that dangles on top of the beak, is known as the snood.
9. The flesh that dangles underneath the beak of the turkey, is known as the wattle.
10. Farmers will incubate the eggs for 28 days, whereupon they are hatched, sorted and separated.
11. The call of a turkey is ‘gobbling’.
12. They are highly social birds, and the collective term for a group is a ‘rafter’.
13. The average lifespan of a turkey is ten years.
14. The Aztec people associated the turkey with the trickster God, Tezcatlipoca, due to its humours behaviour.
15. The most distinct breed in Europe is the Spanish Black.
16. William Strickland was the first to introduce the turkey to England – his coat of arms even had one on it.
17. Thomas Tusser first introduced the turkey to the Christmas fare in 1573.
18. The Broad Breasted White turkey is bred for its meat.
19. The turkey is eaten at Thanksgiving in the US and Canada.
20. It is now seen as a traditional part of Christmas dinner.
21. Before turkey, the working class ate goose at Christmas until the Victorian era.
22. In 2009, 7,734,000 turkeys were consumed on Christmas day.
23. Four billion pounds of turkey feathers are wasted a year.
24. Turkey feather fibres are blended with nylon and spun, whereupon they can be used for knitting.
25. Turkey faeces have been used as fuel in power plants since 2007. 55 megawatts can be produced for 500,000 tons of waste.

Facts About the Madness of Black Friday:

You’ve probably heard some of the madness that surrounds Black Friday, well it’s about to get a little crazier! Black Friday is the start of the biggest shopping weekend of the entire year, it’s full of amazing deals, cheap TV’s and people who literally act crazy! Here’s the top 10 facts about the unique tradition of Black Friday!

1. In the 1800’s, the term “Black Friday” was used in reference to the stock market crashes.
   The term was used for the first time on 24^th September 1869 when James Fisk and Jay Gould were trying to corner the gold market on the NYSE. However, the government stepped in and flooded the market with gold, causing prices to fall and many investors to lose their fortunes.
2. The predecessor to Black Friday were the Santa Claus parades.
   Over the years, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has become part of the holiday season rituals in America. However, the first “Santa Claus parade” was held on 2^nd December 1905 in Canada. When Santa appeared at the very end of the parade, it was a signal to officially kick off the holiday season. American stores took their lead and began to have similar parades all across the United States. In 1924, the premier Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was held. The parade was run by employees of Macy’s and featured some of the animals from the zoo in Central Park.
3. Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for plumbers.
   As bizarre as this may sound, it was reported by CNN who explain that the plumbers are needed to clean up after guests “overwhelm the system”.
4. Holiday shoppers indirectly determined the date for Thanksgiving.
   From the mid-19^th to the early 20^th century, the US president would declare a “day of giving thanks” on the last Thursday in November. This changed in 1939 when the last Thursday was the last day in the month. Retailers were afraid that the holiday season would be shortened and therefore, petitioned the president to declare the holiday be held one week earlier. In 1941, Congress created a joint resolution to clear things up. After that, Thanksgiving was always celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, which gave shoppers one extra week to shop before Christmas.
5. Black Friday was once called “Big Friday”.
   According to a 1975 report from the NY Times, the term “Black Friday” is Philadelphia slang. This is because the police had become frustrated with the traffic congestion caused by shoppers on that day, and the retailers weren’t happy to be associated with traffic and smog. So, in 1961, one newspaper tried to rename the day as “Big Friday”, but, as you already know, this term didn’t stick around long. Though it had been popular in Philadelphia, “Black Friday” was not an official national term until the 1990’s.
6. Black Friday wasn’t officially claimed to be the busiest shopping day of the year, until 2001.
   It was thought of as being the biggest shopping day of the year, however, it was actually the Saturday before Christmas that beat it every year until 2001.
7. Black Friday has spread to over 15 countries in the world.
   For many years, Canadian retailers would worry when their customers went into the States on Black Friday in search for great deals, which forced them to start their own Black Friday deals, since then, various other places in the world have taken on this tradition including the UK, Brazil, India, France, Norway and many more…
8. In Mexico, it is referred to as “El Buen Fin”, which translates to “the good weekend”.
   This is actually attached to the anniversary of the 1910 Mexican revolution, which sometimes coincides with the American Thanksgiving. El Buen Fin actually lasts for the entire weekend instead of just one day.
9. In 2011, Walmart broke the tradition of Black Friday.
   The tradition of Black Friday shopping was broken when Wallmart opened up their store on the evening of Thanksgiving. Since that time, the retailers are engaged in a race against the clock to catch up with the times. These days, 33 million Americans plan to run out shopping as soon as they finish their Thanksgiving feast. This is known as Grey Thursday.
10. 12% of Black Friday shoppers are drunk.
    According to a survey conducted on behalf of the coupon site RetailMeNot, 12% of all Black Friday shoppers admit they hit the stores whilst under the influence of alcohol.

Well, there’s your ten facts! If you don’t like the madness of Black Friday, fear not, Cyber Monday is gaining in popularity, when millions of shoppers sit at home ready to click ‘add to cart’ when the item they’re watching goes on sale. Whether you prefer Grey Thursday, Black Friday or Cyber Monday, this weekend is truly the biggest shopping weekend of the year.

Gripping Facts on Sharks:

Sharks have a fearsome reputation as man hunters, but more people are killed by falling coconuts than sharks! Read on for more shark facts!

1. Sharks have prowled the waters for over 400 million years.
2. There are many breeds of sharks. The most well-known are:
   a. Bull shark
   b. Great White shark
   c. Hammerhead shark
   d. Nurse shark
   e. Sand Tiger shark
   f. Tiger shark
   g. Whale shark
3. The largest shark on record was a Whale shark. It reached up to 46ft.
4. The smallest shark on record was a Dwarf Lantern shark. It reached 6 inches.
5. The heaviest shark on record was a Whale shark. It weighed 13.6tonnes.
6. The Shortfin Mako shark is the fastest shark in the world.
7. Young sharks eat their own teeth when they are born.
8. All sharks have triangular serrated teeth to kill their prey with.
9. Many sharks are solitary hunters and will only merge with groups when it is breeding season or for migration.
10. Many sharks are “finned” (slicing the top dorsal fin from the body) to make soup in Asian countries.
11. Great White sharks belong to the Mackerel shark family.
12. The Great White shark is the largest flesh-eating shark.
13. It is capable of jumping up to 2m out of the water when hunting prey.
14. 48% of hunts by a Great White, end in a kill.
15. A Great White’s diet consists mainly of seals, sea lions, fish, and small dolphins.
16. A female Great White can have up to ten young.
17. They have been known to attack humans, and often mistake them for seals.
18. Tiger sharks attack their prey from below, and drag them down, drowning them.
19. Tiger sharks prefer warm, salty waters to inhabit.
20. They have a striped back, which is useful for camouflage.
21. A female Tiger shark can have up to eighty-two young.
22. In 1935, a Tiger shark was taken into captivity by an Australian zoo. Days later, it regurgitated a tattooed arm. It was found that the arm belonged to a murder victim. Using the remaining DNA, it led the police to capture the murderer.
23. The eyes of a Hammerhead shark are at either end of the “hammer”.
24. The “hammer” prevents the shark from nose-diving when swimming.
25. A female Hammerhead can have up to forty young.
26. In 1974, Peter Benchley had a book published, which told of a Great White shark that terrorised a small coastal town. It was entitled, Jaws.
27. In 1975, Jaws became a film of the same name, by Steven Spielberg. It spawned four sequels.
28. The film was so successful a ride was opened at Universal Pictures. It took people for a ride around Amity Harbour, the site of shark attacks. During the ride, the boat is “attacked” by a Great White shark.
29. In 2003, Disney and Pixar released a movie about a clownfish who is separated from his father. There were three sharks in the film, who claimed that, “Fish are friends, not food.” The sharks were Anchor (a Scalloped Hammerhead), Bruce (a Great White), and Chum (a Shortfin mako). The film was Finding Nemo.
30. The San Jose Sharks are an ice hockey team in California. This is just one sports team with “sharks” in the name.

Sniffer-Rats To Detect Landmines:

Sniffer-dogs? Nah, sniffer-rats! That’s right; rats have been trained to sniff out landmines. Staff at Porfell Wildlife Park and Sanctuary in Cornwall has taught a Gambian poached rat called Kofi to alert handlers when he detects a mine.

The rat… sorry, Kofi is too small to set off any landmines, but his sense of smell can pick up the scent of the bomb casing. Kofi isn’t the first rat though, well, he’s the first in the UK, but Africa beat us to it.

They plan to use sniffer-rats to help the Army not get themselves blown up as much, and rats are more reliable than sniffer-dogs, because they weigh less, therefore having less chance of setting off the explosive.

They are trained from a young age and are taken through many different stages to get to be profession bomb sniffers, they would be a great help for the police to help them with terrorist attacks.

Rats seem to be more intelligent than I ever thought, if they can save peoples’ lives, then I say get them all on leads!

A downside of rats though is their vision is very poor and they only see in black and white, which could be a problem when they off their leads, although I’m sure it’ll not be long before somebody will invent some gadget that will give rats supervision!

Facts About Polar Bears:

Polar bears are the world’s largest land predators. They generally hang around in Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland, and Norway, with about sixty percent of them living just in Canada. It is illegal to hunt polar bears in these countries. This doesn’t mean that polar bears don’t have to worry about extinction though as now the main threat to them is climate change.

Female polar bears normally start having baby cubs at the age of four or five. When cubs are first born, they are the size of an average rat and weigh less than half a kilogram. Polar bears normally live up to 25 years old.

When polar bears get hungry, they like to munch on seals. The way they catch the seals is to sit quietly at a seal’s breathing hole in the ice, wait for a seal to appear and viciously sink its teeth into the seal’s head, or they go to Iceland and get some ice-lollies.

If you have an infrared camera, try taking a photograph of a polar bear if you have the chance. Even though a polar bears average body temperature is 37°C, they don’t give off any detectable heat, so they won’t show up in infrared photographs.

What colour is polar bears fur… white? Wrong. Each hair is like a transparent hollow tube. Polar bears look white because each hair reflects visible light, like snow and ice does.

Is that so?