Taj mahal

Taj Mahal, the magnificent monument that stands at the heart of India has a story that has been melting the hearts of millions of listeners since the time Taj has been visible. A story, that although ended back in 1631, continues to live on in the form of Taj and is considered a living example of eternal love. It's the love story of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, two people from the course of history who set an example for the people living in present and the future to come. An English poet, Sir Edwin Arnold best describes it as "Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passion of an emperor's love wrought in living stones." The story that follows next will prove why the statement is true.

Shah Jahan, initially named Prince Khurram, was born in the year 1592. He was the son of Jehangir, the fourth Mughal emperor of India and the grandson of Akbar the Great. In 1607 when strolling down the Meena Bazaar, accompanied by a string of fawning courtiers, Shah Jahan caught a glimpse of a girl hawking silk and glass beads. It was love at first sight and the girl was Mumtaz Mahal, who was known as Arjumand Banu Begum at that time. At that time, he was 14 years old and she, a Muslim Persian princess, was 15. After meeting her, Shah Jahan went back to his father and declared that he wanted to marry her. The match got solemnized after five years i.e., in the year 1612.

It was in the year 1628 that Shah Jahan became the Emperor and entrusted Arjumand Banu with the royal seal. He also bestowed her with the title of Mumtaz Mahal, meaning the "Jewel of the Palace". Though Shah Jahan had other wives also, but, Mumtaz Mahal was his favorite and accompanied him everywhere, even on military campaigns. In the year 1631, when Mumtaz Mahal was giving birth to their 14th child, she died due to some complications. While Mumtaz was on her deathbed, Shah Jahan promised her that he would never remarry and will build the richest mausoleum over her grave.

It is said that Shah Jahan was so heartbroken after her death that he ordered the court into mourning for two years. Sometime after her death, Shah Jahan undertook the task of erecting the world's most beautiful monument in the memory of his beloved. It took 22 years and the labor of 22,000 workers to construct the monument. When Shah Jahan died in 1666, his body was placed in a tomb next to the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal. This magnificent monument came to be known as "Taj Mahal" and now counts amongst the Seven Wonders of the World. This is the true story of the Taj Mahal of India, which has mesmerized many people with its bewitching beauty.

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Solar City Tower and Waterfall – 2016 Olympics

In conjunction with the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, several new structures will be erected in Rio’s cityscape. One of the many projects creating huge buzz is the Solar City Tower, an artificial waterfall designed to generate clean, renewable energy.

Designed by Swiss firm, RAAFA, Solar City Tower won the architecture competition for the 2016 Olympic Games. Inspired by Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfall series, the Solar City Tower will be built on Cotunduba, one of the islands in Rio’s Guanabara Bay.

The vertical structure will be used as an observation tower, and it will capture and distribute solar power to the Olympic Village and to the city. The 345 foot structure will have solar panels around its base, used to store energy during the day, releasing it through turbines for use at night.

For special occasions, the turbine will pump seawater into the tower and then shoot it back out to sea, creating a waterfall effect in the middle of the ocean.

In addition to this building’s sustainable features, the tower will also have an amphitheater, stores, and a coffee shop. An elevator will take visitors to a 360° view of Rio de Janeiro’s landscape. There will also be a platform from which extreme sports lovers will be able to experience bungee jumping.

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Newly discovered Mayan calendar goes way past 2012

Newly discovered wall writings found in Guatemala show the famed Maya culture's obsession with cycles of time. But they also show calendars that go well beyond 2012, the year when the vanished civilization, according to popular culture, expected the end of the world."So much for the supposed end of the world," says archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, lead author of a study in the journal Science, which reported the discovery on 10 th Thursday.

Discovered in the ruins of Xultun (SHOOL-toon) , the astronomical calendar was unearthed from a filled-in scribe's room. While about 7 million Maya people still live in Central America today, the "Classic" Maya civilization of pyramid temples had collapsed there by about 900 A.D., leaving only a few birch-bark books dating to perhaps the 14th century as records of their astronomy, until now."The numbers we found indicate an obsession with time and cycles of time, some of them very large," Saturno says. "Maya scribes most likely transcribed the numbers on the wall in this room into (books) just like the ones later seen by conquistadors."

Explorers first reported the site of Xultun, once a large Maya center, in 1915. But it was only two years ago that National Geographic Society-funded archaeologists noted a small residential room partly exposed by looters. The room's walls proved to hold murals and small, delicate hieroglyphs inscribed in rows between paintings of scribes and rulers that not only corresponded to a 260 day ceremonial calendar and 365-day year, but the 584-day sky track of Venus and 780-day one of Mars.Examination of the rows shows they are columns of numbers and symbols similar to lunar eclipse calculations found in early 16th century Maya writings that tied astronomical events to rituals. Some of them include dates corresponding to a time after the year 3500.

"A fascinating discovery and a first in Maya archaeology," says Maya anthropologist Victoria Bricker of Tulane University in New Orleans. She notes its conclusive linkage of the later books to the Classic Maya calendar carved in stone dating back to before 300 A.D. The room's wall calculations likely served as a blackboard for scribes, in a society where festivals, rituals and farming were tied to astronomical observations.

"Seeing the actual writing on the wall certainly gives us a little insight into history," says Maya writing expert Simon Martin, co-curator of the "Maya 2012: Lords of Time" exhibition now ongoing at Philadelphia's Penn Museum. Although once viewed as peaceful star-gazers, more recent scholarly work has revealed that politics, war and trade dominated ancient Maya society. "We're seeing the pendulum swing back with this discovery, where we can now see astronomy playing a role in ordering their society," Martin says.

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The Titanic Real Story

On that fateful night of April 14, 1912 there were 2,235 souls crowded aboard the R.M.S. Titanic.  There was no wind to speak of.  The frigid, dark sea was calm, like a plate glass mirror beneath the star-spangled heavens.  It was an hour before midnight on a starry, moonless night.  While the band played on beneath the decks in the first class lounge, and while the night watch paced the Bridge high above, the greatest maritime tragedy in the history of sailing, stealthily, silently awaited them in the ice-strewn midnight waters of the North Atlantic.

Survivors recalled a gentle shudder that briefly shook the 900 foot long vessel.  It came and went so quickly that nobody gave it much of a second thought.  Except for the occupants of the Bridge–who in the split seconds before that collision, saw the towering iceberg ahead, floating in their unlighted pathway.  The helmsman swerved to miss the iceberg–but they would have been better off to have struck it head on.  In narrowly avoiding a head-on collision, they suffered an even worse fate!

Three-fourths of the iceberg lay unseen beneath the calm ocean surface.  When  the Titanic swerved, it brushed the iceberg's underside on the starboard side of the bow, slitting a quarter of an inch wide opening more than 300 feet down the side of the vessel.  Like a titanic can opener, the iceberg knifed open the side of the iron hull.  The damage was just enough to cause the metal plates to buckle so that six watertight compartments began taking in sea water.

So scientifically had this great sailing ship been constructed, with 16 watertight compartments in a 1/6 mile long hull, that the captain had made a pre-voyage boast, "Not even God himself could sink her".  The builders had calculated that even if four of the compartments should burst, the ship would still float!  But on that starry night, six of them exploded and began to suck in the frigid water of the North Atlantic!  Mathematically, the "unsinkable ship" was mortally wounded.  And, in two hours she was gone.  Commander Lightoller, one of the few crew members who survived the tragedy, described the moment it sank.

Moment of Sinking

Commander Lightoller's eyewitness description: 

"When [floating in the dark] I recognized my surroundings, we were full fifty yards clear of the ship.... Lights on board the Titanic were still burning, and a wonderful spectacle she made, standing out black and massive against the starlit sky; myriad's of lights still gleaming through the portholes, from that part of the decks still above water. 

 "The fore part, and up to the second funnel was by this time completely submerged, and as we watched this terribly awe-inspiring sight, suddenly all the lights went out and the huge bulk was left in black darkness, but clearly silhouetted against the bright sky.... This unparalleled tragedy that was being enacted before our very eyes, now rapidly approached its finale, as the huge ship slowly but surely reared herself on end and brought rudder and propellers clear of the water, till, at last, she assumed an absolute perpendicular position.  In this amazing attitude she remained for the space of half a minute.  Then with impressive majesty and ever-increasing momentum, she silently took her last tragic dive to seek a final resting place in the unfathomable depths of the cold gray Atlantic. 

Titanic 2012 new photos

Of the 2235 occupants, 1522 met their death in those dark waters including most of the men, most of the third class, most of the crew, and all of the band.  Only 713 people were rescued.

And the world lined up for hours to relive their tragic story in the most watched movie ever in human history.  Why?

Could it be that Titanic is more than a tale about love and death of heart throbs Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio?  Could it be that there's a deep, subconscious sense the world over that this tragedy at the beginning of the 20th century was in fact a warning parable of an ominous unnamed tragedy that hangs like Damocles' sword over our planet, while we're partying to beat the band? 

 

 

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Sailing stones

There is something utterly magical about the sailing stones of the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley California. Scattered about the desert are large rocks with mysterious trails left behind them. The trails show that these rocks have rolled and zig-zagged across the ground, sometimes for as long as 860 feet. Yet no one has ever seen the stones actually move. The trails last for years before fading, so it is almost impossible to predict when the stones will move or how fast they move.

A team of scientists set out to find the answers. They named a group of stones, and did surveys of the area over a seven-year period. A 700-pound block dubbed Karen, which didn't move at all while under study, was entirely missing when they returned years later. A sighting of the 700-pound Karen was made over half a mile from the survey site. Later teams have studied the phenomenon and determined that winter ice flows and strong winter winds are responsible for the movement of the stones; in particularly strong winters, stones may move further. 

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World’s Greatest Mysteries

1. Easter Island
Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, is remotely located 2,000 miles off the coast of Tahiti. The original settlers of the island were Polynesians who migrated to the far-off land between 400 and 600 BC. They built many shrines and statues, called moai, from stones quarried throughout the island including a volcano site. Researchers still question exactly how the large stones were moved.

The world is full of unsolved mysteries, some that invoke the supernatural. Many have tried to establish reason to these wild quandaries, but not all have perfect answers. Here are some of the best enigmas the world has to offer…


2. The Legend of El Dorado
The Legend of El Dorado originates from the Muisca, who lived in the modern country of Colombia from 1000 to 1538 AD. In a ritual ceremony for their goddess, the tribal chief would cover himself in gold dust and jump into a lake as an offering. This spawned the legend of a lost golden city, which led Spanish conquistadors on a wild goose chase to nowhere.

3. The Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle — located in the Atlantic between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico — is a thief, stealing planes and boats right out of existence. The area got its name after Sgt. Howell Thompson (l.), along with 27 Navy airmen, vanished from the devilish spot during a routine flight in 1945. Rumors persist on a supernatural explanation, but many specialists blame hurricanes, a heavy Gulf Stream and human error.

4. The mighty Incan Empire of South America
The mighty Incan Empire of South America flourished between 1200 and 1535 AD. They developed drainage systems and canals to expand their crops, and built stone cities atop steep mountains — such as Machu Picchu (above) — without ever inventing the wheel. Despite their vast achievements, the Incan Empire with its 40,000 manned army was no match for 180 Spanish conquistadors armed with advanced weapons and smallpox.

5. The Mayan Temple
According to the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, made famous by the ancient Mayan people, December 2012 marks the ending of the current baktun cycle. This little bit of information has many archeologists spooked. Some believe the Mayans were warning of a coming apocalypse, while others insist it’s simply a mathematical misconception.

6. The Nazca Lines
The Nazca Lines cover more than 190 square miles in the southern deserts of Peru. The mysterious shapes etched into the land rival football fields and predate the Incan Empire. The ‘Las Manos’ figure (above) is 2,000 years old. Little is know about why the Nazca people constructed such vast pieces of sand art, some believe they are extraterrestrial in nature, while others claim they may have carried and pointed to sources of water.

7. Ancient Pyramids in Giza, Egypt
Khafre (l.) and Khufu (r.) are two of the three ancient Pyramids in Giza, Egypt. Khufu is the biggest, consisting of more than 2 million stones with some weighing 9 tons. The Pyramids, built as elaborate tombs for divine kings, date back to 2,550 BC. Modern Egyptologists believe that the Pyramids are made from stones dragged from quarries and, despite ancient Greek testimony, were built predominantly by skilled craftsmen rather than slave labor.

8. Sphinx of Giza, Egypt
Another Egyptian wonder, the Sphinx of Giza has the body of a lion and the head of a Pharaoh, believed by most to be that of king Khafre. It was carved from soft limestone, and has been slowly falling apart over the years. A popular theory of the missing nose claims Napoleon’s soldiers shot it off with a cannon in 1798, but early sketches discovered of the Sphinx without a nose predate Napoleon’s rampage.

9. The Loch Ness Monster
According to Scottish folklore, a mystical creature called a water horse lures small children to a watery grave by tricking them to ride on its sticky back. The Loch Ness Monster became an English wonder in 1933, after witness accounts made newspaper headlines. No hard evidence of the creature has ever been recorded with several pictures, including the one above, being proven as hoaxes.

10. Aliens
Area 51, located on Groom Lake in southern Nevada (c.), was founded in 1955 by the U.S. Air Force to develop and test new aircrafts – such as the U-2 Spy Plane, A-12 Blackbird and F-117 Stealth Fighter. The secretive nature of the military base, combined with its classified aircraft research, helped conspiracy theorists imagine an installation filled with time-travel experimentation, UFO coverups and alien autopsies.

11. The Stonehenge
The Stonehenge landscape of Salisbury Plain, England, has become a tourist hotspot. But before foreigners with windbreakers and cameras showed up, the area may have been a burial ground and ceremonial den dating back 5,000 years.

12. The Lost City of Atlantis
The Lost City of Atlantis was introduced to the West 2,400 years ago by Plato, who claimed it to be the island home of an advanced society. Legend says it was sunk by an earthquake, with later interpretations as an underwater kingdom protected by mermaids. Its whereabouts still a mystery, recent underwater evidence suggests it was once apart of a larger landmass in Cyprus off the Mediterranean (c.), but the only true Atlantis exists in the Bahamas as a grand casino and resort hotel.

13. The Fountain of Youth
Don Juan Ponce de Leon completed Spain’s claim on America in 1509, and soon after was made governor of Puerto Rico. Six years later, following Indian rumors, he traveled north to the island of Bimini in search of the Fountain of Youth. Bimini turned out to be the peninsula of Florida, and the fountain remained hidden until July 2006, when famed magician David Copperfield claimed the waters on his $50 million Exumas Island (c.) had healing properties.

14. The Ark of the Covenant
The Ark of the Covenant is described in the Bible as a wooden casket, gold plated, made for carrying the tablets of the Ten Commandments. The casket was carried throughout the desert and remained in the Israelite Temple until its destruction by the hand of the Babylonian Empire. Its whereabouts are still unknown, but Hollywood made its own version for ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark.’

15. Chupacabra
Phylis Canion holds the head of what she is calling a Chupacabra at her home in Cuero, Tex. The strange-looking animal, first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995, apparently has a taste for chicken and goat blood. Although many pictures like the above might prove its existence, biologists assure none such creature exists.

16. The Iron Pillar of Delhi
The Iron Pillar of Delhi is a 1,600-year-old, 22 feet high pillar located in the Qutb complex in India. The pillar, made from 98% wrought iron, has been astounding scientists by its ability to resist corrosion after all these years.

17. Stone Spheres in Costa Rica
Discovered in the early 1940s in Costa Rica during excavations by the United Fruit Company, these perfectly formed stone spheres date from 600 AD to the 16th century. Their makers and purpose still unconfirmed, many believe them to be some religious effigy made to worship the sun.

18. The Tunguska Explosion of Russia
The Tunguska Explosion in Russia occurred around 7:14 a.m. on June 30, 1908. To this date, the exact cause of the explosion – which leveled 80 million trees over 830 square miles – remains a heated debate. Most believe it to be caused by a meteoroid fragment, others insist either a black hole or UFO origin.

19. Mothman
A humanoid with insect wings and crimson eyes, known as the Mothman, terrorized Point Pleasant, W.Va., during the late 1960s. No solid evidence exists of the creature, except for a handful of witness reports documented in paranormal-journalist John A Keel’s ‘Mothman Prophecies’.

20. Jersey Devil

According to legend, 250 years ago a Jersey woman by the name of Mrs. Leeds cried out in despair during her 13th pregnancy, ‘Let it be the Devil!’ After childbirth, the baby was revealed to be a kangaroo-like creature with wings, and flew away to cause all sorts of Jersey Devil mischief. Today the Jersey Devil can be seen getting fans riled up during local hockey games.

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