18 interesting facts about Amy Winehouse

1. Amy's debut album, Frank was released on October 20, 2003.
2. In 2008 Bryan Adams wrote a song for Amy Winehouse in a bit to help her overcome her drug habit. The song titled Flower Grown Wild, is about the dangers of drug-taking.
3. While performing at a concert in Burmingham England in November 2007, Amy was booed by the audience, with others walking out in protest to her drunken state.
4. Amy and her husband were arrested in Norway for marijuana possession (October 2007).
5. In her song Rehab, she mentions the names Ray and Mr. Hathaway. These are references to the soul singers Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway.
6. Amy Winehouse has one brother, named Alex.
7. Winehouse has appeared as an extra in a sketch on The Fast Show.
8. In May 2007, Amy married Blake Fielder-Civil in a secret ceremony in Miami.
9. Her eye color is hazel.
10. Amy Winehouse height is 5 feet 2 inches. edit »
11. Amy received her first guitar when she was 13.
12. Her song "Rehab" is based on her past refusal to attend an alcohol rehabilitation centre after it was encouraged by her management company.
13. Amy Winehouse pierced her nose when she was 13.
14. Her favorite artists include Nas, Mos Def, Teena Marie, Beastie Boys, Carol King, Mahalia Jackson and Thelonious Monk.
15. In February 2007, Amy won the Best British Female Award at the Brit Awards, beating the favourite to win, Lily Allen.
16. Amy Winehouse is an English songwriter and jazz and soul singer.
17. Appeared as a guest on the 'Charlotte Church' Show. They sang Michael Jackson's 'Beat It' together.
18. In June 2008, Amy was voted the celebrity most likely to retire early.

AMY WINEHOUSE DEATH

At 3:54 pm BST (14:54 UTC) on 23 July 2011, two ambulances were called to Winehouse's home in Camden, London. Shortly afterwards, the Metropolitan Police confirmed her death. Her record label, Universal, released a statement that read in part: "We are deeply saddened at the sudden loss of such a gifted musician, artist and performer."

The Old Stone Age

In southern France and northern Spain there are many caves. Dur­ing the last part of the great Ice Age many of these caves were used as homes by the people who lived in Europe in those days. These people we now call the cave men.

Several times during the Ice Age great sheets of ice pushed down from the north and then melted back. Scientists have discovered that there were people in Europe some 100,000 years ago, before the last great push of ice from the north. These people left many signs behind them.

As the ice pushed southward the climate grew colder and colder. The people had been living in the open. Perhaps they had simple shelters made of tree branches. But because of the cold they needed better shelters. They moved into the caves.

To live in the caves themselves they had to drive out giant cave bears and many other animals. They were able to drive out these animals partly because they knew how to make fire. A flaming torch was a very good weapon against an animal. Besides, they had weapons made of stone— stone axes and stone knives.

The early cave men had only one way of getting food—hunting. When they killed an animal, they brought it to the cave and cooked it. The bones they threw aside. When there were too many ashes around the fire, they pushed these aside, too, and covered up the bones. Once in a while a cave man lost one of his stone tools in the ashes. Scientists have been able to find out a great deal about the cave men by digging through the ashes left in the caves.

After the early cave men had lived in the caves for thousands of years, the ice began to melt back. Then a new people pushed into Europe from the south.

These later cave men were tall and strong. They were much more like the peo­ple of today. They had good brains—at least we can guess that they had from the size and shape of their skulls. They made some weapons of bone, but they still made most of their weapons of stone. They, too, got their food by hunting. They had not learned to tame any animals or grow plants. They did not make pottery. Their only clothing was made from animal skins.

But in one way they were far ahead of the early cave men. They drew excellent colored pictures of animals on the walls of their caves. Many of the pictures show animals which have not been in the region for a very long time. Among these animals are mammoths and bison.

To get to some of the rooms where the pictures are, one has to crawl through narrow passageways. Many of the pictures are on the ceilings.

The caves are so dark that the cave men must have had lights of some kind. Perhaps they burned dry moss or sticks.

These cave men also made models of animals. Some of them are so good that an artist of today would be proud to have made them. The handles of many bone tools were carved into animal shapes.

The time in which the cave men lived is often called the Old Stone Age. It is named from the crude stone weapons the cave men used. The Old Stone Age in Europe ended more than 8,000 years ago.

With the retreat of the ice, people could work out better ways of living. Other peo­ple moved into Europe and mingled with the cave dwellers. Better tools were developed, and homes more comfortable than caves were built. The New Stone Age began.

7 Facts About Saint Basil's Cathedral

1. The cathedral was given the nickname "St. Basil's" after the "holy fool" Basil the Blessed (1468-1552), who, at that time, was hugely popular with the Muscovites masses and even with Ivan, the Terrible, himself.
2. St. Basil's Cathedral was primarily built by 'Ivan the Terrible', to commemorate the capture of the Tartar stronghold of Kazan, in 1552.
3. The cathedral is the most recognizable symbol of Russia. Its colorful onion domes are instantly recognizable around the world as emblems of Moscow.
4. The design of St. Basil's Cathedral comprises of nine individual chapels. Each of the nine chapels has a unique onion dome, reflecting a victorious assault on the city of Kazan.
5. The design of the cathedral is based on contemporary tented churches, mainly those of Ascension in Kolomenskoye (1530) and of St John the Baptist's Decapitation in Dyakovo (1547).
6. It is believed that after the construction work of Saint Basil's Cathedral was complete, Ivan blinded Postnik Yakovlev - the architect, to prevent him from constructing a more splendid building for anyone else.
7. Each of the chapels of Saint Basil's Cathedral stands adorned by beautiful icons, medieval painted walls, and varying artwork, on the top inside of the domes.

12 interesting Facts About Microbes

1. Microbes, by weight, represent 60 percent of the biomass of all life on Earth!
2. Microbes outnumber all other species and make up most living matter.
3. Microbes first appeared on earth about 3.5 billion years ago.
4. Microbes generate at least half the oxygen we breathe.
5. 1,000: number of microbial species that normally live on the surface of our skin.
6. Microbes drive the chemistry of life and affect the global climate.
7. A single gram of soil can contain more than a billion microbes!
8. Until birth, the digestive tract is sterile by 48 hours. After birth, microbial colonization is quantitatively similar to that of the adult.
9. Most microbes do not cause disease.
10. 0.000004: diameter in inches of the smallest bacteria.
11. Microbes comprise ~60% of the earths biomass.
12. Pathogen microbes are of three types: viruses, bacteria and protozoans.

10 facts about the Sahara desert

1. The countries which Sahara desert encompasses include Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia and Western Sahara.
2. Sahara desert is the second largest desert in the world, after Antarctica, and the largest hot desert in the world.
3. Geographically, Sahara desert is rocky, with varied elevation. It contains underground rivers, which sometime penetrate the surface, resulting in oases.
4. The history of the desert dates back to 3 million years ago.
5. It might sound strange, but the peaks in the desert are snowcapped during the winter. The eastern part of Sahara - Libyan Desert, is dry and has very few oases.
6. There are some sand dunes in the desert which reach a height of about 180 meters.
7. Sahara desert receives only 8 inches of rainfall per annum. This is one of the reasons for the meager population in the region, with just 2 million people here.
8. The climate of Sahara desert is very hot and dry. During the day, it is very hot, while night brings along chill.
9. Earlier, the desert used to be a fertile area, in which elephants, giraffes and other animals grazed. Slowly it started becoming drier and the fertile landscape gave way to infertile region, as we see today.
10. Arabic is the most widely spoken language in the Sahara region, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.

10 interesting facts about rabbits

1. Rabbits can jump to a height of more than 36 inches.
2. A rabbit can see behind himself, without turning his head, but has a blind spot in front of his face.
3. Rabbits can purr, just like a cat.
4. Domestic rabbits cannot breed with wild rabbits.
5. Rabbits eat their own night droppings, known as cecotropes.
6. Rabbits cannot vomit.
7. The teeth of a rabbit never stop growing.
8. The largest litter of baby rabbits was 24 and it has been witnessed twice.
9. When rabbits are happy, they jump and twist.
10. There are over 150 different colors of a rabbit’s coat, but only 5 eye colors (brown, blue-grey, blue, marbled, and pink).

13 interesting facts about rugby

 1. A rugby match consists of two 40-minute halves and a 10-minute halftime.
2. According to legend, rugby was created at Rugby School when, during a footie game in 1823, a pupil named William Webb Ellis suddenly picked up the ball and started running with it. Sadly, there's no evidence to back this up. It's almost certain that the game actually evolved slowly as different generations of pupils tinkered with the rules of football.
3. The field, called a pitch, is 100 yards by 75 yards.
4. There are 15 players per team on the pitch during a match.
5. Being out of bounds is called "touch."
6. The ball is advanced by running or kicking. Forward passes are illegal. All players can run with or kick the ball.
7. A scrum consists of packs of players gathered in a tight huddle where they battle for control of the ball.
8. The place of a penalty infringement is called the mark.
9. The oldest rugby club in the world is Dublin University Football Club. Founded in 1854, it is also happens to predate the first ever soccer club, Sheffield FC, by three years.
10. A tackle does not stop play.
11. A "try" is so-called because the act of running over the line and touching the ball down originally carried no points and merely allowed the team to try for a kick at the goal. The rules were eventually changed to make trys, rather than goals, the best way to score points.
12. Rugby balls are shaped the way they are because the original balls, made by a cobbler near Rugby School, were fashioned from pigs' bladders. These bladders naturally became oval-shaped when inflated – a grisly process which literally involved blowing into them like balloons.
13. The world's first international rugby game was played in 1871 between Scotland and England. Scotland won it, but England got their own back by winning at their next confrontation.