Titanic

RMS Titanic was a British luxury passenger liner which was built by Harland and Wolff ship builders, in Belfast, for the White Star Line company. Before she sailed, many people thought it would be almost impossible for ships of this design to sink.

RMS Titanic departing Southampton on 10 April 1912

FEATURES  

RMS Titanic was 882 feet 9 inches (269.06 m) long with a maximum breadth of 92 feet 6 inches (28.19 m). Her total height, measured from the base of the keel to the top of the bridge, was 104 feet (32 m).

At 78 feet 8 inches (23.98 m) high and 15 feet 3 inches (4.65 m) long, weighing over 100 tons, RMS Titanic's rudder was so large that it required steering engines to move it.

The Belfast slipway from which the Titanic was launched in May 1911 — 11 months before the liner sank — was smothered in 22 tons of soap and tallow to ensure a smooth passage. The launch took just 62 seconds.

The Titanic actually started off having enough lifeboats – they removed a bunch to make the ship look less cluttered.

The most expensive first class tickets on the Titanic were $4350 (or £870) in 1912 money. That's over $100,000 today.

Provisions for the 2,229 passengers and crew on board RMS Titanic when she sailed in April 1912 included 200 barrels of flour, 40,000 fresh eggs, 2.75 tons of tomatoes and 100,000lb of fresh meat, poultry and game. Those in 1st and 2nd Class ate their main meal in the evening; 3rd Class passengers, were served their ‘dinner' at midday.

The famous Grand Staircase, which connected Boat Deck and E Deck

MAIDEN VOYAGE 

Titanic's maiden voyage began at noon on Wednesday, April 10, 1912 when the liner left Southampton on the south coast of England. It called at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland before heading west to New York.

The life boat drill planned for April 14, 1912, was cancelled.

The Titanic collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean at 11.40 PM on April 14, 1912 and began to sink. 

The route of Titanic's maiden voyage. By Prioryman

The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal. It had been adopted as the international signal for distress earlier in 1912. 

At 12:50 a.m. EST on April 15, 1912, junior wireless operators at Cape Race, Newfoundland, received a report from the Virginian that they were trying to reach Titanic, but had lost communication. Titanic's last signals at 12:27 a.m. were "blurred and ended abruptly."

There were an estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, and an estimated 1,517 died - only 306 bodies were recovered.

"Untergang der Titanic", as conceived by Willy Stöwer, 1912

Of the estimated 1,517 people who died on the sinking of RMS Titanic more than a third were from Southampton.

As the Titanic went under, the band played ragtime until the ship's bridge dipped underwater, then the bandmaster led his men in the Episcopal hymn, "Autumn". The male passengers formed up on deck and under the leadership of New York real estate tycoon Colonel John Jacob Astor sung the Welsh hymn "Nearer thy God to Thee". 

John Jacob Astor IV in 1909. 

A priest on the Titanic refused a lifeboat and instead, stayed behind to hear confessions and give absolution to those on the ship.

Colonel John Jacob Astor (1864-1912) was the richest person to die when the Titanic sank: he was worth an estimated $ 90 million (around $2 billion, or £1.5 billion, today). The year before he had caused a scandal when, as a 47-year-old divorced man, he married a teenage socialite. She survived the disaster at sea and four months later gave birth to their son.

Irish Titanic passenger Jeremiah Burke sent a good bye message in a bottle during the sinking. It subsequently washed up near his home, where his handwriting was recognized by his mother.

According to models, Titanic should have tipped over about an hour into the sinking, killing practically everyone. Miraculously a rare coal fire during the voyage required coal to be shifted to the opposite side of the ship, creating a list that offset the incoming water during the sinking.

The first pictures of the wreck of the Titanic were released on September 4, 1985, 73 years after it sank. The American-French expedition used a submarine 2.5 miles beneath the surface.

The bow of the wrecked RMS Titanic, photographed in June 2004

The 1985 discovery of the Titanic stemmed from a secret United States Navy investigation of two wrecked nuclear submarines, according to Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who found the infamous ocean liner. When Ballard announced a mission to find the Titanic, it was a cover story for a classified mission to search for the lost nuclear submarines. They finished before they were due back, so the team spent the extra time looking for the Titanic and actually found it. 

SURVIVORS

There are many remarkable stories of various victims and survivors including a man called John Harper who journeying on the Titanic to preach at the Moody Church in Chicago. When it sunk he found himself amongst 1500 others swimming frantically in the water. As he did so he drifted towards a young man who had climbed up on a piece of debris. Harper asked him between breaths, "young man, are you saved?" the man replied that he was not. The men drifted apart in the darkness before a wave brought them within speaking distance of each other and again a quickly weakening Harper yelled to him "Believe on the Name of the Lord Jesus and you will be saved." At that John Harper slipped into his watery grave but the young man was rescued by the S.S. Carpathia.

Four years later the young man stood up in a Christian Endeavor meeting in New York and proclaimed in tears, "I am John Harper's last convert." 

Arrival of Titanic's survivors at New York (artist concept)

Charles Lightoller, the second officer of the Titanic, who survived by swimming from the sinking ship to a capsized raft, later in life sailed his civilian craft to Dunkirk and helped evacuate over 130 men.

Richard Norris Williams survived the Titanic sinking, but spent over 6 hours waist deep in freezing water and the rescue doctor recommended amputation of both his legs. He refused and proceeded to win his first tennis tournament a few months later and became Wimbledon doubles champion in 1920. 

Frank Goldsmith, Jr., a Titanic survivor who later lived near Navin Field (Tiger Stadium) in Detroit, never took his children to baseball games because the roar of the crowd reminded him of the screams of people dying in the freezing water.

Charles Joughin, Chief Baker on the RMS Titanic, helped passengers board lifeboats (forcibly boarding those who thought it safer to stay on the ship), drank half a bottle of liqueur, then threw chairs overboard for use as flotation devices, rode the side of the ship down while it sunk. He spent 3 hours in the -2°c waters before he was rescued alive and survived. 

The occupants of the lifeboats of the RMS Titanic included a musical toy pig, two mysterious "orphans" and a Pekingese dog called Sun Yat Sen.

The chairman and MD of the White Star Line, Joseph Bruce Ismay (1862-1937), was the highest-ranking official to survive the Titanic disaster. The 1997 Titanic movie depicted him as a coward and, in 2012, his descendants spoke out for the first time to clear his name and reject claims that he had escaped on the first lifeboat and even dressed as a woman to secure his rescue.

The last remaining survivor of the Titanic went on to live to 97. At two months old, Millvina Dean was the youngest aboard the liner when it sank in 1912. Her mother and brother also survived, but not her father.

MOVIES 

The earliest Titanic-based movie,  Saved from the Titanic, was released just 29 days after the sinking. It featured an actress who was actually on the Titanic and survived. For her role, she wore the actual outfit she had on the night it sank. The actress suffered a mental breakdown shortly after its completion. No copies of this film remain.

The 1958 British film A Night to Remember is still widely regarded as the most historically accurate movie portrayal of the sinking.

The biggest budget movie portrayal of the sinking was James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster Titanic, which was released in the US on December 19, 1997. It became the highest-grossing film in history up to that time, as well as the winner of 11 Oscars at the 70th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Cameron.

Wikipedia

Five weeks into the 1997 Titanic movie's run, 7% of all American teenage girls had seen the film twice.

Even when adjusted for inflation, the 1997 movie Titanic cost 50 per cent more than the original ship.

The 1997 movie Titanic goes on longer than the actual sinking of the RMS Titanic.

The collision scene of the Titanic hitting the iceberg in the 1997 Titanic movie is the same length as it took for the actual collision- 37 seconds.

When filming the 1997 movie Titanic they only built the port side of the ship. Scenes showing the starboard side were flipped in post production. As a result of this everything on the starboard side of the ship, from lettering to the buttons on costumes, had to be backwards during filming.

Kate Winslet, who played Rose in the 1997 Titanic movie, hates the song "My Heart Will Go On," and said it makes her feel "like throwing up."

FUN TITANIC FACTS 

Futility: or The Wreck of the Titan, a novella about an ‘unsinkable' ocean liner called Titan that crashed into an iceberg and sank without enough lifeboats was written by Morgan Robertson in 1898 — 14 years before the Titanic sank.

'The Just Missed It Club' was for people who almost sailed on the Titanic. Two weeks after it sank, it had 118,337 members.

On April 15, 1912, a steward who hadn't yet heard about the Titanic sinking spotted an iceberg smeared with red paint and snapped a photo.

There are still over 100 unidentified victims from the Titanic.

The underwater wreckage of Titanic will disappear by 2030. It's being 'eaten away' by a microorganism "Halomonas titanicae". Also known as the "steel-munching bacteria', they have a special liking towards metals.

Sources Daily Mail, Daily Express

Tire (or Tyre)

A tire (American English) or tyre (British English) is a ring of material that covers the rim of a bicycle and motor vehicle wheels.

The term "tire" comes from the word "attire", from the idea that a wheel with a tire is a dressed wheel.

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HISTORY

Back when carriages relied on real horse-power and bicycles weighed a ton, travelers were forced to endure bone-jarring rides over the bumps and potholes of the nation's primitive roads. Scottish railway engineer Robert Thomson saw the potential of air to soften the way and on December 10, 1845, he patented the use of pneumatic leather tires on bikes. However, his invention was deemed too expensive to mass-produce.

Abert Thomson's obituary in The Illustrated London News of 29 March 1873

In 1888, a Scottish veterinary surgeon called John Dunlop, who had a flourishing practice near Belfast, fitted his son's tricycle wheels with inflated rubber hoses instead of solid rubber tires in order to make it more comfortable to ride on the bumpy roads. 

Dunlop's development of the pneumatic tire handily coincided with the new bicycle craze and when a cyclist using the 'Dunlop Pneumatic Tyres' won a race in Belfast a year later, the pneumatic cycle tire was on its way.

Dunlop's first pneumatic bicycle tyre National Museum of Scotland. By Geni 

His company, formed in 1889, became known as the Dunlop Rubber Co in 1900.

Originally tires were a gray-white or light and translucent-beige color as a byproduct of Zinc Oxide being added to the rubber to add strength. Black tires only started being made after 1912 when, Binney & Smith began selling their carbon black chemicals to Goodrich Tire Company. This was because they found that the use of carbon black in rubber manufacturing significantly increased the longevity of rubber intended to be turned into tires. 

Two brothers, Édouard Michelin and André Michelin, ran a rubber factory in Clermont-Ferrand, France. The brothers were enthusiastic about the pneumatic tyre, and worked on creating their own version, one that did not need to be glued to the rim. Michelin was incorporated on May 28, 1889. 

In 1891 Michelin took out its first patent for a detachable pneumatic tyre on a metal rim, which was used by Charles Terront to win the world's first long distance cycle race, the 1891 Paris–Brest–Paris.

The Michelin man is known as Mr Bib. His name was Bibendum in the company's first adverts in 1896. The reason he's white is because he was created before carbon was added as a preservative and a strengthener to the basic rubber material. 

An 1898 poster by "O'Galop" of Bibendum, the Michelin Man

It wasn't until 1912 that companies started mixing carbon chemicals with the rubber to make black tires. This process is not an aesthetic change, but a structural one, making the tires stronger and durable.

Michelin developed and patented in 1946 a key innovation in tire history, the radial tire.

Michelin owned the leading automaker Citroën, so it was quickly able to introduce its new design, including on the new 1948 Citroën 2CV model. Because of its significant advantages in durability and fuel economy, this technology spread quickly in Europe and Asia in the 1950s and 1960s and enabled Michelin to become one of the worlds leading tire manufacturers.

FUN TIRE FACTS

LEGO, which is the largest toy company in the world, also makes more than 300 million rubber tires a year — making it the biggest manufacturer of tires, too. The second largest tire company, Michelin, produces only 170 million a year.

Formula One teams don’t own their tires, and at the end of each race teams have to return the tires to Pirelli. Even used tires must be returned to prevent industrial espionage.

The tiny bits of rubber sticking out of tires are called "nubbins" and they formed in the holes used to pump rubber into the tire mold.

The World's Largest Tire currently resides in Allen Park, Michigan. This 12 ton, 80-foot-tall beast is built to withstand hurricane force winds, and served as a Ferris wheel (and a huge advertisement for Uniroyal) at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.

The Flat Tire Alarm, patented in the US,  is a steel spring device which, when fastened to each wheel on a car, makes a loud clacking noise if a tire looses too much air.

A car tire rotates 32,000,000 times in its average lifetime.

Airplane tires leave between 1 to 1.5 pounds of rubber on the runway when they land.

Time

Time is the continuous passing of existence, recorded by division into years, days, hours, minutes and seconds.

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

The Romans used daylight and darkness to determine time, so for them an hour was 45 minutes in the winter and 75 in the summer.

It wasn't until 525 when the monk Dionysius Exigous (Dennis the Little) devised a new calendar originating from Christ’s birth, which he assumed was 48 years after the death of Julius Caesar, that some in the west began recording time from the life of Jesus.

The Malaysian phrase for the time it takes to eat a banana is "pisan zapra" and it was a measure of time used before clocks were invented.

The phrase "o'clock" is short for "of the clock" and comes from a time when people had to specify their time came from a clock instead of a sundial or other device.

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During the American Revolutionary War, many soldiers, including George Washington, carried a portable sundial to tell the time. 

In 1862 Adolphe Nicole of Switzerland patented the chronograph -- a timepiece that allows for split-second timing of sporting events. 

On February 8, 1879 Scottish-Canadian engineer Sandford Fleming first proposed the dividing the world into 24 time zones at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute. This made him the father of world standard time.

American times zones were created by railroad officials in 1883. The underlying cause of confusion was simply that the United States had no time standard. Each town or city would keep its own solar time, setting clocks so noon was when the sun was directly overhead.

Greenwich, in London, England was established as Universal Time meridian of longitude in 1884.

Official Standard Time Zones in the world. Wikipedia

From 1986, the term Greenwich Mean Time was replaced by UTC. However the Greenwich meridian remains that from which all longitudes are measured, and the world's standard time zones are calculated from it, each hour corresponding to 15° longitude.

The Royal Greenwich Observatory began broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips" in 1924.

Greenwich clock. By Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

Unix time is a system for describing a point in time, defined as an approximation of the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), on January 1, 1970. At 23:31:30 on February 13, 2009 the Unix system time number reached 1234567890 seconds. Parties and other celebrations were held around the world, among various technical subcultures, to celebrate 1234567890 day.

The invention in 1955 of the caesium atomic clock has led to the replacement of older and purely astronomical time standards, for most practical purposes, by newer time standards based wholly or partly on atomic time.

TIME MEASUREMENT 

The Babylonians created the 7 day week because there are seven celestial bodies visible to the naked eye (The Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn).

Formerly measurement of time on Earth was based on our planet's rotation on its axis, but this was found to be irregular. Therefore, the second, the standard SI unit of time, was redefined in terms of Earth's annual orbit of the Sun by the International Committee of Weights and Measures in 1956.

A pendulum-governed escapement of a clock, ticking every second

A jiffy is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

A second is called a second because it's the result of the second division of an hour by 60, the fist division being a minute.

The official definition of 1 second is based on a quantum mechanical phenomenon, namely "the duration of 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Caesium 133 atom's outermost electron".

A moment is a medieval unit of time, which corresponded to approximately 90 modern seconds.

A zeptosecond, a trillionth of a billionth of a second, is the smallest division of time that has been observed.

The word 'fortnight' is a contraction of 'fourteen-nights'.

FUN TIME FACTS

Someone traveling at the speed of light could travel forever because they wouldn't experience time at all.

There is an official world record for time traveling. It's held by cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who has spent 803 days total in orbit around Earth. According to Einstein's theories of relativity, this would mean Krikalev effectively has gained 22.68 milliseconds of lifetime on his journeys to space.

If we put a giant mirror ten light years away from Earth and looked at it through a telescope theoretically we'd see 20 years into the past.

Because the earth is slowing down, today is about 0.00000002 seconds longer than yesterday.

A.M. stands for “Ante Meridiem,” which is Latin for “Before Midday”; P.M. stands for “Post Meridiem,” which is Latin for “After Midday.”

Amazonian speakers of Nheengatú use gestures to describe time, pointing at where the sun would be in the sky to say a specific time of day.

Since 1405 until the present day without interruption, the Swiss city of Lausanne has maintained a lookout in the Cathedral bell tower. The lookout announces the time by yelling the hour from 10 pm to 2 am, 365 days a year. The lookout cries the hour to each cardinal direction.

Dogs can tell time by scent. They can smell different times of the day, and how long you've been gone by how much your (owner's) aroma has dissipated since you've left.

Tightrope walking

Tightrope walking, also called funambulism, is the art of walking along a thin wire or rope.

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Tight wire walkers are known as funambulists.

Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.

On June 30, 1859 Jean François "Blondin" Gravelet, successfully crossed Niagara Gorge on a tightrope, 160 ft (49 m) above the water, near the location of the current Rainbow Bridge. He repeated the feat a number of times thereafter, always with different variations: blindfolded, trundling a wheelbarrow, on stilts, somersaulting and backflipping or with his manager, Harry Colcord, clinging to his back.

Engraving (c. 1883) of Blondin crossing Niagara with his manager on his back

One of Blondin's Niagara crossings involved him carrying a stove and utensils on his back, walking to the center of the cable and starting a fire. He then sat down on the wire and cooked and ate an omelette.

In 1948, the oldest tightrope walker William Ivy Baldwin celebrated his 82nd birthday by crossing a 319 ft-long high-wire suspended across Eldorado Canyon in Colorado.

On August 7, 1974 Philippe Petit performed a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.

Philippe Petit's famous high-wire performance between the Twin Towers is known as "the artistic crime of the century". After completing his stunt, Petit was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. These charges were dropped on the condition that the tightrope performer put on a free high-wire performance for children in Central Park.

German tightrope walker Karl Wallenda was killed in 1978 when a gust of wind blew him from a high wire strung 123ft up between two hotels in Puerto Rico. He was 73 at the time, and just before the stunt he'd told reporters that he never felt more alive.

Freddy Nock, a Swiss stuntman known for his daring tightrope walking feats, accomplished a notable achievement on September 7, 2015. On that day, he successfully completed a tightrope crossing while riding a bicycle of a world record 485m (1,591 ft).

Nock is a professional tightrope walker and acrobat. He has set several world records, including the longest tightrope crossing blindfolded and the longest tightrope crossing across a waterfall. He is also a member of the Swiss National Circus.

The tightrope crossing was part of a stunt show that Nock was performing. The show was called "The Flying Dreams of Freddy Nock" and it was held at the Erlenbach Festival. The show also featured other aerialists and acrobats.

Estonian stuntman Jaan Roose made history on September 16, 2024, by becoming the first person to traverse the Bosphorus Strait on a slackline at such a dizzying height. The 1,074-meter-long rope, suspended 165 meters above the water, connected Asia to Europe across Istanbul's iconic July 15th Martyrs Bridge. Roose's remarkable 47-minute journey was part of the ambitious "Continental Pass" project. This unprecedented feat marked the first time anyone had crossed from one continent to another on foot at such a high altitude.

Every able-bodied resident of the tiny, largely secluded Russian village of Tsovkra can tightrope walk. Tsovkra is home to just under 400 people, but all of the village’s school children reportedly study tightrope walking, and old and young alike regularly practice in all kinds of weather. The tradition goes back more than 100 years and nobody is sure how it started.

Tiger

The tiger is the largest of the great cats Panthera tigris, formerly found in much of Central and South Asia but increasingly rare. 

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There are five species of tiger around today: Bengal, South China, Indochinese, Sumatran and Siberian. Caspian, Bali and Javan tigers are now sadly extinct.

Tigers survive in temperatures ranging from -35c in Russia to 48c in India.  

ANATOMY 

The tiger is the largest big cat, reaching more than 11ft in length and weighing more than 850lb.

The largest living cat in the world is an adult male liger that's 3.33m (10ft) long and 1.25m (4ft 1in) tall at the shoulder. Hercules is a cross between a female tiger and a male lion and lives in a U.S. wildlife reserve in South Carolina. At 922 pounds he weighs more than twice as big as the average African lion. 

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur. 

Just like zebras no two tigers have the exact same stripes.

A tiger's tongue is so coarse, it can lick flesh down to the bone. If it licked your hand it would draw blood. 

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Their pupils are round because they hunt in the morning and evening - unlike nocturnal domestic cats, whose eyes have slits. 

Tigers can run at speeds up to 40mph and leap 33ft- but nine in ten of their hunts fail.

BEHAVIOR 

In Nepal, tigers and people have learned to use the exact same forest trails at different times of day to reduce the chances of fatal encounters.

A tiger in India traveled more than 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) in 2019 in search of a mate - the longest such walk ever recorded by a big cat in India. The tiger began its migration from the Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in the western state of Maharashtra. It criss-crossed through forests and populated urban areas before eventually settling in Dnyanganga Wildlife Sanctuary in Maharashtra. 

Female tigers are fertile for only four or five days a year, during which they mate frequently. 

The gestation period for a tiger is about 113 days — and the mother normally gives birth to three or four cubs. A typical human pregnancy lasts 268 days.

Unlike most members of the cat family, tigers like water. They are good swimmers and often cool off in pools or streams.

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Tigers cannot purr. To show happiness, tigers squint or close their eyes. This is because losing vision lowers defense, so tigers only purposefully do so when they feel comfortable and safe.

A Tiger's roar is so loud that is can be heard from over two miles away and can reach up to 114 decibels, which is about as loud as a jet airplane taking off.

Female tigers roar at much higher frequencies than male tigers.

RELATION WITH HUMANS 

Between 1800 and 2009, tigers killed an estimated 373,000 humans.

The Champawat Tiger, active mostly in the 19th century killed 430 people. That tiger killed more people than 300 years of worldwide shark fatalities, or more people than snakes, bears, wolves, and spider fatalities combined in the U.S. in the last 100 years.

The Champawat Tiger was eventually shot in 1907 by legendary hunter Jim Corbett.

Man-Eater of Champawat.

In the 1980's, people living in the borders of forests in India and Bangladesh were issued plastic face masks to wear on the back of their heads. Tiger attacks virtually stopped because the tigers thought people were looking at them when their backs were turned.

In some parts of India, when a tiger kills someone in the forest a red cloth is tied to a tree to mark the spot where they are killed and to show where a tiger has been hunting.

On December 25, 2007, a tragic incident occurred at the San Francisco Zoo. A 4-year-old Siberian tiger named Tatiana escaped from her enclosure and attacked three visitors, sadly resulting in the death of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. and injuring two brothers, Amritpal and Kulbir Dhaliwal. Tatiana was eventually shot and killed.

CONSERVATION 

The number of tigers in the wild has decreased from 100,000 to 3,000-4,000 over the past century. They have also lost about 93 per cent of their natural habitat.

The map below shows the tiger's historic range in about 1850 (pale yellow) and in 2006 (in green).

The Technical Assessment: Setting Priorities for the Conservation and Recovery of Wild Tigers: 2005–2015,

In 1973 Project Tiger, a tiger conservation project, was launched in the Corbett National Park, India.

In 2010, at the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit, July 29 was declared to be Global Tiger Day, after it was found that 97% of all wild tigers had disappeared in the last century, with about only 3,000 of them remaining. The declaration committed 13 tiger range countries to double the number of wild tigers by 2022. The goal of Global Tiger Day is to raise awareness about the conservation of tigers and to promote a global system for protecting their natural habitats.

Since 2010, there has been some progress in tiger conservation. The number of wild tigers has increased by about 20%, and there are now an estimated 3,900 tigers in the wild. However, tigers are still facing many threats, including habitat loss, poaching, and climate change.

There are as many as 7,000 tigers living in the US either in zoos or privately owned, according to some estimates. The figure greatly exceeds the estimated 3,200 population that exist in the wild in the rest of the world.

There are more tigers in captivity in Texas than in the wild worldwide.

The Siberian tiger is the largest member of the cat family. Only about 500 remain in the wild. In 1995, the zoo on the English island of The Isle of Wight had to give special training to its Siberian tigers as it was the first time they had ever seen snow.

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FUN TIGER FACTS

A group of tigers is called a 'streak' or an 'ambush.'

The tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, South Korea and Vietnam.

Sabre-toothed tigers were not technically tigers but a breed of the prehistoric cat Smilodon fatalis.

Siberian tigers are the only predators to have been documented preying on fully grown bears.

In 2006 Australian researchers found that goats can be scared off by the smell of tiger excrement.

Sources Daily Express, Daily Mail

Tie (or necktie)

A tie or necktie, is a long piece of cloth, worn usually by men, for decorative purposes around the neck, resting under the shirt collar and knotted at the throat. It is usually made of silk or polyester, and it usually has a color or pattern on it.

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The modern necktie traces back to the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) when Croat soldiers who served with the French in King Louis XIV's Royal Regiment wore their traditional small, knotted neckerchiefs as part of their uniform. Completely unknown in France, it became their distinguishing feature, so much so that Frenchmen called it after him: a "croat," which became "cravat."

This new article of clothing started a fashion craze in Europe and both men and women wore pieces of fabric around their necks.

Sometimes this necktie was decorated with lace and wearing a lace frill was seen as signs of enormous wealth and status. For example, King Charles II of England, who adopted the cravat when in exile in the Netherlands, wore a costly lace frill worn which corresponded to about a ten year salary at the time.

After Charles II brought the necktie with him to Britain during the 1660 Restoration, no gentleman in England would be seen without a cloth around his neck-the more decorative, the better.

A page from Neckclothitania showing different cravat knots.

The honor of father of modern necktie construction goes to Jesse Langsdorf of New York, who in 1924 patented the all-weather, wrinkle-free tie.

King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom had a highly respected reputation as a leader of fashion. As a result, it was assumed he invented the world-famous Windsor knot after he abdicated in 1936 and became Duke of Windsor. According to Sarah Giddings, fashion trend researcher, the tie knot may well have been the brainchild of his father, George V. George was photographed in the 1920s wearing a tie knotted in what appeared to be the never-before-seen Windsor knot.

Windsor knot. By Urkel-os - Own work,

Fred Astaire famously wore a necktie around his waist instead of a belt, an affectation he picked up from his friendship with actor Douglas Fairbanks but often mistakenly attributed to Astaire alone.

On March 19, 1965 Tailor And Cutter Magazine ran an article asking The Rolling Stones to start wearing ties. The current fashion did not include wearing ties with shirts and many tie-makers were facing financial disaster.

On June 27, 1997, the Board of Aldermen of South Padre Island, Texas, a tourist resort in the Gulf of Mexico, voted to make it illegal to wear ties on the island. The resolution was passed with a vote of 4-1, with Mayor Betty Eunice casting the only dissenting vote. The resolution was met with mixed reactions. Some people supported the resolution, saying that it would help to create a more relaxed and fun atmosphere on the island. Others opposed the resolution, saying that it was an infringement on personal freedom. The resolution was eventually repealed in 2000.

The biggest ever necktie in the world, measuring 808 metres, was displayed in Croatia. It took five days to complete and was tied around the Pula Arena in 2003.

The necktie adds color to a man's dress in many ways. The "loud" tie is worn to attract attention. The "old school tie" proclaims loyalty to a particular college or club. A black tie conveys one's sense of loss at the death of a close relative or friend.

A Swedish team of mathematicians calculated there are 177,147 different ways to tie a tie.

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Police officers and security guards often wear clip-on ties as a precaution against being strangled by a pulled necktie.

Source Europress Enyclopedia

Tibet

Tibet is a historical region in Inner Asia. It covers a barren plateau bounded south and south west by the Himalayas and north by the Kunlun Mountains. 

Tibet. By Mak at zh.wikipedia 

A kingdom established in the 7th century, Tibet came under nominal suzerainty in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before independence was regained after a revolt in 1912.

Tibet was invaded by China in 1950 and has since been known as the Xizang Autonomous Region of China.

Before the Chinese takeover of Tibet, 25 percent of the males in the country were Buddhist monks.

Between the 17th century and 1959, the Dalai Lama was the head of the Tibetan government.

Induction of Lungtok Gyatso, 9th Dalai Lama, in the presence of Ambans around 1808.

On May 23, 1951 delegates of the 14th Dalai Lama and the government of the newly established People's Republic of China signed the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, affirming Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.

Between 1951 and 1959 the Chinese People's Liberation Army controlled Tibet, although the Dalai Lama remained the nominal spiritual and temporal head of state. 

In 1959, the Dalai Lama had to flee from Tibet to Dharamsala, India. This is still his base today.

The first election of the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration in the history of Tibet took place in 1960. The Tibetan community observes this date as the Democracy Day.

The Qinghai–Tibet Railway, the world's highest railway and the only railway line to the Tibet Autonomous Region, was inaugurated on July 1, 2006.

Tanggula Railway Station, located at 5,068 m (16,627 ft), is the highest station in the world. 

Tanggula Railway Station By Yaohua200027999

Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of 4,900 meters (16,000 ft).

Lhasa is Tibet's traditional capital and the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region. It contains two world heritage sites – the Potala Palace and Norbulingka, which were the residences of the Dalai Lama. 

The Potala Palace in Lhasa. By Antoine Taveneaux 

Tibet has a smaller GDP than Malta, but is 4,000 times its size.

It is ranked the lowest among China’s 31 provinces on the Human Development Index according to UN Development Programme data.

Tibetans say hello by sticking their tongues out at each other.

In Tibet, it's good manners to stick out your tongue at your guests.

In Tibet distances used to be measured by the number of cups of tea that would need to be drunk to get there.

In Tibet hard slabs of compressed tea are used as money before being finally brewed.

Thunderstorm

Thunder is the sound we hear from the sonic wave caused by the expansion of air that has been rapidly heated by lightning.

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The Norse God of Thunder, Thor, was also god of strength, agriculture, farmers, free men, rain and fertility. Thunder was supposedly created by the rolling wheels of his chariot, which was drawn by two goats called Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder.

In France in 1033 there was a mass panic that the one thousandth anniversary of the death and resurrection of Christ would result in the end of the world. Fears were heightened when terrific thunderstorms destroyed the crops in the spring resulting in widespread famine. Many people made public spectacles of repentance and many more embarked on pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

One hot July day in 1505, returning from his parents' home during a thunderstorm, Martin Luther was nearly struck by lightning. Frightened, he cried "help me St Anne and I will become a monk." To the surprise of his friends Luther joined the Augustian Hermits. He went on to study theology and ancient languages before starting the Protestant Reformation.

Benjamin Franklin's groundbreaking explorations of electricity included flying a kite with a metal key tied to the end of the string in a thunderstorm and collecting a charge in a Leyden jar when it was struck by lightning. From this he invented the pointed lightning rod conductor.

Benjamin West, English (born America) - Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity From the Sky

The hymn "Rock of Ages" was written by the Anglican curate, Reverend Augustus Toplady, after taking a walk at Burrington Combe, a steep limestone valley with many caves. A mighty thunderstorm blew up and the curate found an opening in an immense granite rock, in which he sheltered from the storm. This inspired the imagery of Christ in the hymn as a sheltering rock.

On July 26, 1959, Lt. Col William Rankin was on a high-altitude flight along the Carolina Coast with his wingman, Navy Lt. Herbert Nolan when he was forced to eject from his F-8 Crusader at 40,000 feet, into a thunderstorm. Rankin encountered very low temperatures, frostbite, massive wind and lightning, severe decompression, and nearly drowned from breathing in rain water, but survived. Overall, he was in the cloud for more than 40 minutes.

The Canadian city of Montreal was hit by a series of thunderstorms between the noon hour and 2:30 pm on July 14, 1987. Over 100 millimeters (3.9 in) of rain fell during this very short period of time, resulting in The Montreal Flood of 1987.

An average of 44,000 thunderstorms take place every day on our planet — with an around 1,800 thunderstorms in progress over the earth's atmosphere at any one moment.

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The most thundery place on Earth is said to be Tororo, Uganda, where it thunders 251 days a year.

The sound of thunder travels about 1,100 feet per second.

Fear of thunder is called 'brontophobia.' 

Thunderstorms have been known to curdle milk.

Source Daily Express