Miscellaneous

Some of the oldest known popcorn ever found dating back to 6,000 years has been discovered in Peru.It"s a food that"s generally associated with a modern society of cinema-goers but popcorn has actually been part of our diet for thousands of years. "Corn was first domesticated in Mexico nearly 9,000 years ago from a wild grass called teosinte," said museum curator Dolores Piperno."Our results show that only a few thousand years later corn arrived in South America where its evolution into different varieties that are now common in the Andean region began." People living along the coast of Peru were eating popcorn 1,000 years earlier than previously reported and before ceramic pottery was used there, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences co-authored by Dolores Piperno.

 

View: Full article |  Source: PhysOrg.com  

The hearse used to transport the late President John F. Kennedy will go up for sale for the third time.The 1964 model, Miller-Meteor Co. white hearse once owned by a Dallas funeral director is soon to be on the auction block again. While the current owner is unknown, the previousowner attempted to sell it in 2007 and 2009; sales which didn"t go through because of the unwavering sale price.

This time around however there is no asking price so there is no starting limit for the auction. An auto auction company in Scottsdale, Ariz. , plans to sell a 1964 Cadillac hearse that company executives say transported the body of President Kennedy after he was assassinated in Dallas. The car was used to take the body from Parkland MemorialHospital to Love Field Airport, where Air Force One was waiting to return it to Washington.  

View: Full article |  Source: LA Times  

Wikipedia leads the charge as sites protest against two proposed US laws that would censor the internet.SOPA ( Stop Online Piracy Act ) and PIPA ( Protect IP Act ) have caused massive outrage in the online community and represent a huge threat to freedom and innovation on the internet. From Wikipedia"s statement: SOPA and PIPA are badly drafted legislation that won"t be effective in their main goal (to stop copyright infringement), and will cause serious damage to the free and open Internet. They put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won"t have sufficient resourcesto defend themselves.

Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn"t being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won"t show up in major search engines. And, SOPA and PIPA build a framework for future restrictions and suppression. What this means is that if these bills are passed then they could spell an end to free, open community-driven sites and forums. Today"s black-outs and protests are aimed at increasing awareness and to put across a clear signal that these bills are not acceptable. Wikipedia is protesting against SOPA and PIPA by blacking out the English Wikipedia for 24hours, beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time. Readers who come to English Wikipedia during the blackout will not be able to read the encyclopedia: instead, they will see messages intended to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA, and encouraging them to share their views with their elected representatives, and via social media.  

View: Full article |  Source: Wikipedia  

Discovery on beach may help prove the Portuguese were first Europeans in Australia.Although we know that the Portuguese occupied Timor until 1975 there has never been definitive proof that they made it to nearby Australia. Arecent discovery on a beach near Darwin however could help prove Portuguese explorers did land on the island before other Europeans and in so doing rewrite elements of Australia"s past.

Christopher Doukas unearthed the gun buried in mud off Dundee Beach, about two hours" drive from Darwin, during a low tide in January 2010. The Doukas family did some internet research and found it resembled a 16thCentury Portuguese swivel gun.  

View: Full article |  Source: ninemsn.com.au