An Unusual Zebra-Horse Crossing

Meet Eclyse, an amazing zebra-horse crossing! She is a major attraction at a safari park at Schloss Holte Stukenbrock, near the German border with Holland.

The one-year-old horse was the accidental product of a holiday romance when her mother, Eclipse, was taken from her German safari park home to a ranch in Italy where she mated with Eclyse's father Ulysses.

For while most zebra-horse crossbreeds sport stripes across their entire body, Eclyse only has two such patches, on its face and rear. So she's walking proof of how a child inherits genes from both parents.

To entertain your curiosity, RC featured a zoo in China painted a white horse to the zebra which they claimed as an original African zebra and charged with visitors for a photography-taking fee.

World's oldest herdsman, aged 107

An man in China is claiming to be the world's oldest herdsman - at 107 years-old.

Li Xicai, from mountainous Kuangshi village, Ankang city, has been herding animals all his life.


"He was born in 1900, and started herding for landlords, then for the village after the revolution, and now for his family," says his youngest son, Li Zaiming.

He says he doesn't want his father to herd anymore at his age, but his father says herding has become part of his life and he can't break the habit.

These days Li Xicai still herds bulls in the Qinba mountains every day, reports Huashang Daily.

Microsoft Office Bus in China

It seems that those Chinese Microsoft engineers are rather read the books than work on the computers in front of them. Yeah, working all the way from home or office is too boring!

‘Dead’ Man Woke Up at his Funeral

An 87-year-old man gave his relatives a shock in Taiwan - when he woke up at his own funeral.

The man’s relatives were in a Buddhist mourning hall, reciting prayers over the dead body, when it gasped and woke up.

The family had been told by the hospital which had been treating the man that the only thing keeping him alive were oxygen hoses, and that he would die quickly if they were removed.

The family opted to take him out of the hospital so that he could die at home.

They removed the oxygen hoses, dressed him in funeral clothes, and placed him in the mourning hall - until he started breathing heavily.

The family sent him back to the hospital. Doctors are reportedly baffled as to his impressive recovery.

Occultation of Venus by the Moon Spotted in Xinjiang

A spectacular astronomical phenomenon, Occultation of Venus by the moon, was spotted at about 00:10 am on June 19 in the western sky of A Letai city, west China's Xinjiang Ugyur Autonomous Region.

According to the witness, the sparkling star suddenly appeared right above the bright moon at about 23:00 on June 18. The star and the moon shined on each other and remained in this position for quite a long time - lasting until 00:20 am on June 19.

As this marvelous spectacle is very rare, it was the first time that the phenomenon has taken place in the region.

The $1 Million Cone

Bruster's® Real Ice Cream™, the country's premium ice cream retail franchise with more than 260 stores in 18 states, unveiled the world's first $1 million ice cream cone at the JCK Las Vegas Show. This work of art is created in the likeness of its signature waffle cone.

Bruster's waffle cone masterpiece was created by renowned diamond manufacturer, Lazare Kaplan International Inc., and consists of nearly 20 troy ounces of 18k white and yellow gold, 548 round Lazare Diamonds, 87 Lazare square emerald cut diamonds, and one breathtaking 5.63 carat Fancy Intense Yellow radiant cut diamond. The 152.16 carat total weight one-of-a-kind piece has a retail value of $1 million and is for sale!

Great Water Hole

Located in northern California, the Monticello Dam's is the largest morning glory spillway all over the world. This funnel-shaped outlet, allows water to bypass the dam when it reaches capacity, as it swallows a rate of 48,400 cubic feet per second (1370 m³/s).

15 Thousand People Eat Lobster

during The Seventh China Lobster Festival (which is held from June 11 to 28) in Xuyi County of Jiangsu Province on June 12. People devoured nearly ten tons of lobster made by about 500 cooks during the feast. If you are Chinese-savvy, 52xuyi is a dedidated site to the festival.



A few notes. Actually the 'lobster' referred here is not the clawed lobster that lives in the sea, but a freshwater crayfish: Procambarus Clarkii, which can commomly be found in the place where has the water. Xuyi, is a less developed county with numerous large or middle-scale lakes in my home province Jiangsu, but the crawfish produced from this county has won great fames and made vast revenues from home and abroad. Nowadays even when you are travels in big cities in the province like Nanjing, Wuxi or Xuzhou etc., you can always find Some Xuyi Lobster Restaurants.

Coffee-table- shaped computer that has a 30-inch display

Software maker will introduce a coffee-table- shaped computer that has a 30-inch display, allowing people to touch and move objects on the screen.
SEATTLE (Reuters) -- Microsoft Corp. will unveil a coffee-table- shaped "surface computer" Wednesday in a major step towards co-founder Bill Gates's view of a future where the mouse and keyboard are replaced by more natural interaction using voice, pen and touch.
Microsoft Surface, which has a 30-inch display under a hard-plastic tabletop, allows people to touch and move objects on screen for everything from digital finger painting and jigsaw puzzles to ordering off a virtual menu in a restaurant.
It also recognizes and interacts with devices placed on its surface, so cell phone users can easily buy ringtones or change payment plans by placing their handsets on in-store displays, or a group of people gathered round the table can check out the photos on a digital camera placed on top.
Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 76cm touch screen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special barcode labels on top of it.
The company is selling the Surface for between $5,000 and $10,000 each, but aims to bring prices down to consumer levels in three to five years and introduce various shapes and forms.



Microsoft's coffee-table- shaped "surface computer" hopes to one day replace the mouse and keyboard with voice recognition, pen and touch.



Mark Bolger, right, the Director of Marketing
for Microsoft Surface Computing, and Pete Thompson,
Surface Computing General Manager, present "Surface"

Pearl Necklace

Dubbed "Splendid Night", the flowery pearl necklace made of 18K yellow gold and 456 natural pearls was shown on a pearl products exhibition held in Jinan city, capital of east China's Shandong province on June 12, 2007.

Week in Photos

Ponte de Lima, Portugal. A villager gets thrown by a stampeding bull in the center of the historic riverside town of Ponte de Lima.
As part of the annual "Vacas das Cordas" celebrations, which stretch back 350 years, town residents chain a bull to the church, pour wine on it, and then release it into the streets.



Helsinki, Finland. A crucial soccer game in Finland came to what you might call a screeching halt when a wild owl flew onto the field.
Nineteen minutes into the Euro 2008 qualifier match, a northern eagle owl swooped in and roosted on one of the goals at the end of the pitch. After a minute or two, it flew to the opposing team's goal, where it continued to suspend play for another five minutes.
Fans cheered as the owl refused to budge, and officials conferred on how to unseat the winged predator.
In time, the owl took off again, flew a couple of laps around the stadium, and perched on a railing at the end of the field while Finland bested Belgium, 2-0.



London, England. While spring cleaning is a big challenge for the average person, the task is even larger for conservators at London's Natural History Museum.
How large? About 50 feet (15 meters) in this case—the size of an average male sperm whale.
The conservator seen above is sweeping ten years of dust off a sperm whale skeleton in the museum's whale room, which is now closed for cleaning and expected to reopen in July.
The sperm whale, weighing on average 40 tons, is the largest toothed whale on the planet. Whalers hunted the species almost to extinction for its spermaceti oil, blubber, and meat throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
Herman Melville famously brought the story of a sperm-whale hunt to life in 1851 with his novel Moby Dick



Lahore, Pakistan. Hundreds gather in a canal to cool themselves as temperature in the Pakistani city soar to 109.4 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius).
Lahore is the country's second largest city and the capital of the Punjab Province, which is characterized by a spring monsoon followed by a very hot summer.
On June 6 thousands of activists braved the heat to gather outside the city’s provincial assembly to urge Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf to resign.
The president’s recent media restrictions and his suspension of a popular supreme court judge spurred the demonstrations, according to the Associated Press.
And at least for the weather, things aren’t likely to cool down anytime soon. Forecasts predict temperatures in Lahore to rise as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46 degrees Celsius) by the week’s end.



Wuhan, China. It might resemble a giant pot of bouillabaisse, but this is one fish stew that will probably make you sick to your stomach.
Fish suffocated by the hundreds this week at a fishery near Wuhan, China, after an outbreak of blue-green algae used up too much of the oxygen in the water.
Authorities believe the algae bloom was sparked by dirty rainwater released by a pumping station upriver.
On May 22 a similar pollution-driven algae outbreak in Lake Tai in China's Jiangsu Province forced local authorities to shut off drinking water routed to the lakeside city of Wuxi.
"It came out bluish-green and smelled awful," Shi Qing, a tourist boat operator at Wuxi's lakeside Turtlehead Peninsula, told the Washington Post. "The lake was covered in algae and we had to send boats out to clear it."

Computer Parts Art

Amazing but true pictures

CPU from Japan

Gold Shoes

The Employee of a jewellery shop was showing a pair of shoes made of up-to-680g pure gold in Wuhu, Anhui Province June 9, 2007. The shoes were designed by Italian designer under the invitation from World Gold Council.

Hungarians Set World Kissing Record

Hungarians have broken the world record for simultaneous kissing when more than 6400 couples joined lips for a few seconds at a party outside the country's parliament on June 9.

Hungary has been engaged in a kissing duel with the Philippines since 2004, when 5327 couples kissed in Manila, followed by new records in Budapest in 2005 and 6124 couples in Manila again this February.

"The news came a few months ago that Filipinos had overtaken us, we became defiant and said we would take it back again," journalist Ferenc Pallagi who organised the Kissing Party, said.