Really strange small houses…

 

Tumbleweed Houses

Dictators get a bad rap these days. People think that being a dictator is all about crushing your enemies, oppressing the masses and carrying out ethnically targeted genocide campaigns, but it isn’t. There’s more to being a dictator than bullying and brutality. In fact, most dictators are actually pretty fun guys. Some of them, on the other hand, are just plain bonkers.

Let’s take a look at the brighter side of some of history’s most bizarre and cruel men. Here are some fun and interesting facts about dictators.

Idi Amin Dada, a former heavyweight boxing champion, was the military dictator and self-appointed president of Uganda during the 1970s. When he took control of the small African country back in 1971 the people hailed him as a hero. However, they could not have know what kind of man their glorious General would prove himself to be. Maybe the pressures of leadership got to him because pretty soon he began to act very strangely indeed.

Of all Amin’s larger than life characteristics, his ego is perhaps the most famous. He awarded himself many titles and honours, eventually styling himself as ‘His Excellency, President for Life Field Marshall Al Hadj Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC. Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular’. This made him one of the most powerful men in the world, in his own mind at least. But there was one title he did not award himself – that of king. This is not to say that he did not wish to be a king, however. He is rumored to have sent a love letters to Queen Elizibeth II of England, proposing marriage and even that he be made King of Scotland. This is a strange thing for any man to do, especially one known to have despised the British. Of course, Queen Elizabeth did not return Amin’s affections. Perhaps she was turned off by the knowledge that he was a polygamist, amongst other things. He is known to have married at least six women throughout his life, one of whom was found dead, her body horrifically mutilated, after falling pregnant to another man. Amin is also thought to have fathered as many as 43 children.

Since Amin’s death in exile rumors have been abound that he enjoyed eating the flesh of his enemies, however there is very little evidence to suggest that this is true.

 

 

Adolf Hitler is one of the most infamous names in history. The dictator and Furer of Nazi Germany is remembered as one of the most nefarious characters ever to wear a moustache. As a ruthless dictator and mass murderer he is considered by some to have been the embodiment of evil. Yet despite this – or perhaps because of it – he is also the most caricaturised and ridiculed historical figures of all time, appearing in more comedy shows and cartoons than Count Dracula and George Bush combined. We consider this to be a form of punishment, assuming that such a serious and egotistical man would hate being mocked and belittled so. However, this could not be further from the truth. Hitler was a great lover of comedy, the slapstick shenanigans of English comic Charlie Chaplin in particular. When Chaplin released his feature film ‘The Great Dictator’, in which he impersonated and publicly ridiculed the Furer, Hitler was not insulted in the least. In fact, he was said to have been amused and flattered by the performance. Add his winning sense of humour to the fact that he was also a vegetarian and an amateur painter, and you start to realize that Hitler wasn’t such a simmering pot of hatred and evil as history has made him out to be, more of a self deluding, misguided, genocidal buffoon. It is also thought that his failings as an artist may have been a causal factor of his genocidal tendencies. When VanGogh was frustrated he cut off his own ear, Hitler exterminated six million Jews instead.

So what about the rumors that Hitler only had one ball? Well, opinion seems to be divided on this. Many historians believe that this little nugget was nothing but propaganda and that it was first introduced into the public consciousness by way of the popular song, originally entitled ‘Goering has only got one ball’. However, there is evidence that Hitler did suffer a groin injury during the First World War and that his left testicle was indeed removed by army medics.

 

 

 

Almost as bad as those of Hitler, the crimes committed by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin are often forgotten in the Western world. During his great purge nearly two million people were killed with many more being deported or sent to the torturous gulag detention camps. But while that statistic might have looked impressive on Stalin’s resume it tells us little about what he was like in person. Here are some things you probably don’t know about Josef Stalin.

First of all, did you know that Josef Stalin wasn’t his real name but a pen name? With his real name being unpronounceable he took to using this pseudonym back in the days when he was a political activist, possibly in an attempt to hide his Georgian roots. It means ‘man of steel’. After his rise to power, popular nicknames for Stalin in the Soviet Union included ‘Papa Stalin’ and ‘Little Father of the Peoples’, owing to the fact that he was only 5foot 4inches tall. President Truman once described the despot as a ‘little squirt’. Personally, I wouldn’t have called him this to his face; Stalin was notoriously sensitive about his height, having several portrait painters shot for failing to capture his godliness. If this wasn’t enough of a handicap for a dictator, a carriage accident in his youth had also left his left arm shortened and stiffened at the elbow, while his right hand was thinner than his left and frequently hidden.

Despite being a grumpy little man, Stalin was also the man behind the most wicked practical joke ever played. Being a very private man he gave the order that no person should enter his bed chambers on pain of death. Later, while in his chambers he decided to test whether his guards had listened to this instruction. Pretending to scream in pain he called for the guards stationed outside the door. Fearing that their leader was in trouble the guards burst into the room. Stalin had them executed for failing to follow his standing orders. This little prank soon backfired, however, when Stalin suffered a seizure while alone in his bedroom. The guards were too afraid to enter, finding him hours later laid in a puddle of stale urine. He died three days later.

 

 

 

Another of the famous world war II dictators, Mussolini was the leader of Italy’s National Fascist Party and Prime Minister of Itally. His full title was ‘His Excellency Benito Mussolini, Head of Government, Duce of Fascism, and Founder of the Empire’, but he also held the rank of First Martial of the Empire. While some consider Mussolini to have been Italy’s answer to Hitler, opinions are conflicted on this matter. While he was instrumental in the formation of the Fascist ideology and was politically allied with Nazi Germany he is said to have disliked Hitler immensely. He is also said to have had many Jewish friends and to have been opposed to the holocaust. He initially favoured siding with France against Germany but would seem to have fallen in with the wrong crowd.

An interesting fact about Mussolini is that he loved eating raw garlic, despite suffering from a painful stomach ulcer, and believed that it was the elixir of life.

And the award for most pathetic dictator goes to…

 

 

Saparmurat Niyazov, President for life of Turkmenistan from 1990 to 2007, is one of the least famous dictators of all time, partly because few people in the Western world even know where Turkmenistan is. He didn’t invade his neighboring countries, commit mass murder or do any of the things that usually win dictators the international recognition they crave. Like most dictators, however, he was absolutely bonkers.

Another thing he had in common with other dictators is the irresistible urge to rename things, towns and cities in particular. Niyazov, however, went one step further, changing the names of the days of the week and renaming calendar months after heros of the state. He even changed the word for bread, naming it after his beloved mother. What a softie.

Of course, Niyazov did more than rename things. He also introduced sweeping medical and social reforms, closing all hospitals outside of his capital and firing 15,000 public health workers. Also closed were all of the country’s internet cafes and all rural libraries. In 2006 one third of all Turkmenistan’s elderly had their pensions cancelled and were ordered by Niyazov’s government to pay back the previous two years payments. The resulting deaths through poverty, sickness and starvation may have been in the tens of thousands if not more, but Niyazov refused to admit that his policies had any ill effect on the populous.

Amongst Niyazov’s most ridiculous laws was the ban on beards, make-up for newsreaders, recorded music and the exclusion of dogs from the capital city. Aparently he didn’t like the way they smell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Researchers claim to have found the happiest man in America. He is Alvin Wong, a 65-year-old, married, Chinese-American, Kosher-observing Jew who lives in Hawaii.

 

Let’s build this thing..

Wood is an amazing material — it’s strong, malleable, and it literally grows on (or should I say, in?) trees. Depending on the type of tree, wood can be light and heavy, stiff and flexible, soft and hard. It can be carved, steamed, pressed and shaped in ways limited only by the technical prowess and imagination of its shaper. Humans have used it as a building material since the advent of tools, and contemporary designers often choose it in place of more modern substances like metal and plastic. Here are nine of the craziest things made of wood.

Combination lock

It is an amazing 9 1/2 feet (2.74 meters) wide and 42 feet (12.8 meters) long and is billed as the narrowest house in New York City. But there’s nothing small about its asking price: $2.7 million. Located at 75 1/2 Bedford St. in Greenwich Village, the red brick building was built in 1873, sandwiched in a narrow space that used to be an alley between homes at 75 and 77 Bedford.

The narrow house is considered a curiosity and is one of the neighborhood’s most photographed homes. A small plaque on the house notes that poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once lived there; so did anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Real estate broker Alex Nicholas says there is interest in the property and he has appointments on Thursday to show the home to three different potential buyers. The residential interiors are a tight squeeze even by New York standards, measuring just 8 1/2 feet (2.44 meters) wide and 42 feet (12.8 meters) long on each of its three floors.

“Due to the narrowness of the house, I think you have to be very clever in how you decorate,” Nicholas said. The current owners bought the house for $1.6 million in 2000.

The broker’s Web site describes it as a vertical suite, with a kitchen, dining room and parlor on the first floor, a double living room on the second floor and a top-floor master bedroom suite. A trapdoor in the kitchen floor leads to a finished basement.

Large windows in the front and back of the house and a garret skylight, plus a small backyard garden, give it “an airiness, a sense of light and charm,” Nicholas said. He predicted the property will fetch its listed price due to its uniqueness, history and location in one of the city’s most famous preserved neighborhoods.  New York certainly is the craziest place in the USA!

 

Here is an amazing story about Hannah Clark is a 16-year-old with a shy laugh and a love of animals and babies. She likes to go shopping with friends and dreams of a career working with children.
But Hannah Clark is no ordinary teenager and her normal life today could not have been possible without a unique, life-changing heart surgery. In 1994 when she was eight-months-old, Hannah was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy — an inflammation of the heart muscle that impairs the heart’s ability to work properly.

Hannah’s heart was failing and she needed a transplant. But instead of taking her own heart out, doctors added a new donated heart to her own when she was just two-years-old. The so-called “piggyback” operation allowed the donor heart to do the work while Hannah’s heart rested. But Hannah was not in the clear yet. As with any organ transplant, Hannah’s body was likely to reject her new heart and she had to take powerful immune suppression drugs.

Those drugs allowed her body to accept the donor heart but also led to cancer and yet another medical battle for Hannah that lasted for years.  Nearly 11 years after receiving the extra heart, there was more bad news: The immuno-suppression drugs were no longer working. Hannah’s body was rejecting the donor heart.

In February 2006, her doctors tried something that had never been done before: They took out the donor heart. Doctors theorized that the donor heart had allowed Hannah’s heart to rest, recover and grow back stronger.  Now for the first time Hannah’s father, Paul Clark, describes the agonizing decision the family had to make at the time: “If she’d never had it done, she wouldn’t be here.

“In the very beginning it was a 50/50 chance she wasn’t going to make the operation. But in the next one it was even greater because it had never been done before. But we had to take that risk,” he told CNN. The doctors were right. Three years later, Hannah has no need for any drugs and has been given a clean bill of health. The operation was a success.

“It means everything to me,” Hannah told CNN after the pioneering operation. “I thought I’d still have problems when I had this operation done. I thought after the heart had been removed I thought I’d have to visit hospitals. But now I’m just free,” she said, smiling. Dr. Magdi Yacoub performed Hannah’s original transplant and came out of retirement to perform the second.

“The possibility of recovery of the heart is just like magic.” Dr. Yacoub said at a media conference. “[We had] a heart which was not contracting at all at the time. We put the new heart to be pumping next to it and take its work, now [it] is functioning normally.”

The findings have been published in the British medical journal, this seems like a true miracle.  I am curious how the old heart was able to still beat, because you think as a muscle that was not being used it would have went into atrophy.

credits : allweirdnews.com

 

What you are about to read you won’t find on any official Coca-Cola history site because the corporation would rather keep these facts buried and forgotten about.

The soda giant Coca-Cola has been a favorite drink for millions of people all over the world for the last 100+ years. Through out the years the company has tried everything under the sun to sell their products to whomever they could which has brought a lot of controversy on to them.

In the past 100 years the company has been in trouble with racism, child labor, water depletion and much more. I was truly speechless after some of the facts I heard about and you might be to. So if you got an interest in Coca-Cola then this might be for you!

As many people know, Coca-Cola was established in May 1886 by doctor/pharmacist John Pemerton as a nerve tonic. What you probably didn’t know was that Dr. Pemerton was considered a junkie who was addicted to morphine big time. John died only 2 and half years after establishing the soft drink and trademark.

Now it’s no big surprise to most people that Coca-Cola’s main addictive ingredient was cocaine. About 60mg of the drug was used in each serving of Coke until 1903 when they company claimed to have removed the ingredient. Funny thing about it is Coca-Cola still uses and imports coca leaves which are pretty much the main ingredient in the production of cocaine. Also some officials for Coke claimed that the use of cocaine in the soft drink was always a rumor.

Up till the early to late fifties Coca-Cola was believed to have healing properties and with that some pretty unique slogans started to appear on the products. Some you might have heard, others might be totally new to you.

1886 “Coca-Cola Delicious, Refreshing, Exhilarating” No doubt it was exhilarating when they were using cocaine as an additive.

1900 “For Headache & Exhaustion, Drink Coca-Cola” Again I don’t know what cocaine would do for a headache but there’s no doubt the drug takes away exhaustion.

1905 “Coca-Cola Revives and Sustains”

Now as we all know Coca-Cola is an American made soda drink so when I was researching Nazi history for another article, I was totally surprised in what I found. In 1936, Coca-cola sponsored the Berlin Olympics also known as the “Nazi Olympics”. While Britain was at war with Germany the company continued to do business behind enemy lines and advertised beside the Nazi Regime. As America enter the Second World War, German Coca-Cola bottling plants could no longer get the sugar/syrup to make the drink so they invented another drink for the Nazi public called “Fanta”.

Coca-Cola and the Civil Rights Movement

Now again when I came across this fact it blew me away. A day before Martin Luther King was assassinated he held a speech asking the people to boycott Coca-Cola and stop buying their products because of the way the black workers were being treated. Supposedly white workers where getting paid a much higher wage for little work where as the African Americans where expected to do long hours and back breaking work for little pay and no chance of advancement within the ranks of the company.

Human Rights Violations and Murder in Colombia

1n the early 2000’s, Colombia Coca-Cola bottle workers that were with the union started receiving death threats to leave the union, and if they didn‘t comply then they would be killed. Shortly after the message workers started turning up dead.

In 2004, a New York City councilor took a fact finding delegation to Colombia. Once there the councilor found that the Coca-Cola workers were the victims of at least 179 major human rights violations and 9 murders.

Then in Jan 2007 a group known as the “Black Eagles” went on TV to tell the Colombian public if union workers and other didn’t stop basically complaining about Coca-Cola’s work ethics then they would be killed.

Coca-Cola was being blamed for not providing a safe work place and for not taking responsibility for their actions which caused or allowed murders on their properties. Some Colombia officials go on to say or imply Coca-Cola is in someway responsible for these murders of union workers or allowed them to happen which they totally deny.

In only seems fair after all the stories about racial discrimination that finally in 2000 after investigations into the allegations the federal government found Coca-Cola guilty of the charges and ordered them to pay the biggest racial discrimination payout in history. Coca-Cola had to pay various victims restitution which added up to nearly $200 million. If you ask me that’s nothing compared to what they should pay for the decades of abuse against their workers.

Coca-Cola & Coca Leaves

Although Coca-Cola is suppose to contain no trace of cocaine like officials say, one of the main ingredients is the coca leave which is the main key to making cocaine. It’s a known fact that 8 tons of coca leaves are imported from South America each year by Coca-Cola and if any other regular citizen brought any of this into the states then chances are they would be arrested for drug trafficking.

I have read some wild stuff about this company but this one I just couldn‘t believe.

Years back Coca-Cola launched what some people call a “War” against water called “Just say no to H2O”. What this basically consisted of was the Coca-Cola Company offered its various suppliers like restaurants and so on incentives to push their products on customers when they ordered the free tap water. People eventually found a link on the internet and started sharing it which soon caused the “War” to end.

Finally, this one had to be the biggest surprise to me. It takes 2 liters of water to make just 1 liter of Coke. In 2004, farmers in India held protests because Coca-Cola bottling plants where basically bleeding the water wells dry. It got so bad that Coke had to start shipping in water to many off its plants in 3rd world countries.

Over 290 billion liters of water are used every year by Coca-Cola around the globe and shows no signs of slowing down. As people in 3rd world countries continue to die because of a lack of clean water, Coca-Cola’s pockets just keep getting bigger and bigger at the expensive of innocent people.

The Vertu Boucheron 150 is made from “solid gold” and is meant to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Boucheron jewelry house in Paris. According to the designer, it took 1,000 hours to cut into shape, 700 hours to hand polish, and more than 500 hours to build.