10 things you didn't know

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The thylacine, (binomial name: Thylacinus cynocephalus, Greek for "dog-headed pouched one" ) was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger (because of its striped back) or the Tasmanian wolf. Native to continental Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, it is thought to have become extinct in the 20th century. It was the last extant member of its family, Thylacinidae, although several related species have been found in the fossil record dating back to the early Miocene.
The thylacine had become extremely rare or extinct on the Australian mainland before European settlement of the continent, but it survived on the island of Tasmania along with several other endemic species, including the Tasmanian devil. Intensive hunting encouraged by bounties is generally blamed for its extinction, but other contributory factors may have been disease, the introduction of dogs, and human encroachment into its habitat. Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none proven.
Like the tigers and wolves of the Northern Hemisphere, from which it obtained two of its common names, the thylacine was an apex predator. As a marsupial, it was not closely related to these placental mammals, but because of convergent evolution it displayed the same general form and adaptations. Its closest living relative is thought to be either the Tasmanian devil or numbat. The thylacine was one of only two marsupials to have a pouch in both sexes (the other being the water opossum). The male thylacine had a pouch that acted as a protective sheath, covering the male's external reproductive organs while he ran through thick brush. It has been described as a formidable predator because of its ability to survive and hunt prey in extremely sparsely populated areas.

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Princess May was a steamship built in 1888 which was operated under a number of different names and owners. The ship is best known for having been involved in a grounding in 1910 which left the ship jutting completely out of the water, which became the subject of a famous shipwreck photograph.

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Phineas P. Gage was an American railroad construction foreman now remembered for his improbable[n 3] survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior – effects so profound that friends saw him as "no longer Gage".
Long called "the American Crowbar Case" – once termed "the case which more than all others is calculated to excite our wonder, impair the value of prognosis, and even to subvert our physiological doctrines" – Phineas Gage influenced 19th-century discussion about the brain, particularly debate on cerebral localization, and was perhaps the first case suggesting that damage to specific regions of the brain might affect personality and behavior.
Gage is a fixture in the curricula of neurology, psychology and related disciplines, and is frequently mentioned in books and academic papers; he also has a minor place in popular culture.[n 4] Relative to this celebrity, the body of known fact about the case is remarkably small, which has allowed it to be cited, over the years, in support of various theories of the brain and mind wholly contradictory to one another. A survey of published accounts has found that even modern scientific presentations of Gage are usually greatly distorted – exaggerating and even directly contradicting the established facts.
A daguerreotype portrait of Gage – "handsome ... well dressed and confident, even proud," and holding the tamping iron which injured him – was identified in 2009 (see below). One researcher points to it as consistent with a social recovery hypothesis, under which Gage's most serious mental changes may have existed for only a limited time after the accident, so that in later life he was far more functional, and socially far better adapted, than has been thought. A second portrait came to light in 2010.

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Thai Ngoc or Hai Ngoc (born 1942) is a Vietnamese insomniac. According to Vietnamese news organization Thanh Nien, he is best known for his claim of being awake for 38 years. Thanh Nien also claimed that Ngoc acquired the ability to go without sleep after a bout of fever in 1973, but according to the Vietnam Investment Review, there was no apparent cause.[1] At the time of the Thanh Nien report, Ngoc suffered from no apparent ill effect other than being unable to sleep. He was mentally sound and carries two 50 kg bags of pig feed down the 4 km road every day.
In October 2006, however, Ngoc reported that he was beginning to feel "like a plant without water" due to the lack of sleep.

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The lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata) is the largest known species of jellyfish. Its range is confined to cold, boreal waters of the Arctic, northern Atlantic, and northern Pacific Oceans, seldom found farther south than 42°N latitude. Similar jellyfish, which may be the same species, are known to inhabit seas near Australia and New Zealand. The largest recorded specimen found, washed up on the shore of Massachusetts Bay in 1870, had a bell (body) with a diameter of 7 feet 6 inches (2.29 m) and tentacles 120 feet (37 m) long.

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Kjerag or Kiragg is a Norwegian mountain, located in Lysefjorden, in Forsand municipality, Ryfylke, Rogaland. Its highest point is 1110 m above sea level, but its northern drop to Lysefjorden attracts most visitors. The drop is 984 m (3,228 ft) and is just by the famous Kjeragbolten, a 5 m³ big stone which is plugged between two rocks.
Kjerag is a popular hiking destination. Some go there because Preikestolen has become too crowded, some to jump onto Kjeragbolten and quite a lot of BASE jumpers from all over the world go there to dive off the high cliffs. Kjerag is also a popular climbing destination, with many difficult routes going up its steep faces.
The easiest ascent starts from the visitors center Øygardsstølen, with a 2.5-3 hour rather strenuous walk each way. From Stavanger, it is roughly a 2 hour drive (closed in winter season). Or take the touristferry from Lauvvik to Lysebotn in summer. The Lyseroad up from Lysebotn is spectacular (closed in winter). The best season for walking is late June to September depending on snow conditions.

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Matamata is a rural Waikato town in New Zealand with a population of around 12,000 (6,000 in rural areas, 6,000 in the township). It is located near the base of the Kaimai Ranges, and is a thriving farming area known for Thoroughbred horse breeding and training pursuits. It is part of the Matamata-Piako District, which takes in the surrounding rural areas as well as Morrinsville and Te Aroha. State Highway 27 and the Kinleith Branch railway run through the town.
A nearby farm was the location for the Hobbiton set in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy. The New Zealand government decided to leave the Hobbit holes built on location as tourist attractions, since they were designed to blend seamlessly into the environment. During the interim period filming Return of the King and The Hobbit they had no furniture or props, but could be entered with vistas of the farm viewed from inside them.[1] A "Welcome to Hobbiton" sign has been placed on the main road. In 2011 parts of Hobbiton began to close in preparation for 2 new movies based around the Lord of the Rings prequel novel The Hobbit.
Matamata is also the home of various media outlets, including studios for tvCentral, TV Rotorua and iTV Live, which is unusual for a town of such size.

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Charles O'Rear (born 1941) is an American photographer best known for his photos of wine country and the image Bliss that was used as a standard wallpaper in Windows XP.
During the 1970s, he contributed to the Environmental Protection Agency’s DOCUMERICA project. O’Rear photographed for National Geographic Magazine for more than 25 years. He began his focus on winemaking in 1978 as an assignment to photograph the Napa Valley. Afterwards, he moved to Napa Valley and began photographing wine production around the world.To date, O’Rear has provided photographs for seven wine books.

O'Rear's photograph, Bliss, as seen in a typical Windows XP desktop.
O'Rear's photograph of the rolling hills of Sonoma County, titled Bliss, was used as a standard wallpaper in Windows XP and as part of the Microsoft Corporation US$200 million advertising campaign, Yes you can. The image is also available as one of the many image options on Capital One credit cards, and has been subject to many parodies.
O'Rear has also taken photographs for Bill Gates' private Seattle stock photography company Corbis.

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Blood Falls is an outflow of an iron oxide-tainted plume of saltwater, occurring at the tongue of the Taylor Glacier onto the ice-covered surface of West Lake Bonney in the Taylor Valley of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Victoria Land, East Antarctica.
Iron-rich hypersaline water sporadically emerges from small fissures in the ice cascades. The saltwater source is a subglacial pool of unknown size overlain by about 400 meters of ice at several kilometers from its tiny outlet at Blood Falls.
The reddish deposit was found in 1911 by the Australian geologist Griffith Taylor, who first explored the valley that bears his name. The Antarctica pioneers first attributed the red color to red algae, but later it was proven to be due only to iron oxides.

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A fire whirl, colloquially fire devil or fire tornado, is a phenomenon—rarely captured on camera—in which a fire, under certain conditions (depending on air temperature and currents), acquires a vertical vorticity and forms a whirl, or a tornado-like vertically oriented rotating column of air. Fire whirls may be whirlwinds separated from the flames, either within the burn area or outside it, or a vortex of flame, itself.
An extreme example is the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake in Japan which ignited a large city-sized firestorm and produced a gigantic fire whirl that killed 38,000 in fifteen minutes in the Hifukusho-Ato region of Tokyo.Another example is the numerous large fire whirls (some tornadic) that developed after lightning struck an oil storage facility near San Luis Obispo, California on April 7, 1926, several of which produced significant structural damage well away from the fire, killing two. Thousands of whirlwinds were produced by the four-day-long firestorm coincident with conditions that produced severe thunderstorms, in which the larger fire whirls carried debris 5 kilometers away.

Most of the largest fire tornados are spawned from wildfires. They form when a warm updraft and convergence from the wildfire are present.They are usually 10-50 meters tall, a few meters wide, and last only a few minutes. However, some can be more than a kilometer tall, contain winds over 160 km/h, and persist for more than 20 minutes.

Fire whirls can uproot trees up to 15 metres (49 ft) tall.These can also aid the 'spotting' ability of wildfires to propagate and start new fires.
Visually impressive fire whirls may be encountered during dry wind gusts at the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, late on Saturday or Sunday evening during the burning of The Man or Temple, respectively.