Here are some interesting facts you maybe didn’t know about. Take a look!

In NME explosive new interview, she opens up about her music, her work ethic, and her relationship with the media. Then she starts to cry.. Meanwhile, here’s fifty things you didn’t know about her.

Gaga taught herself how to play piano by ear when she was four years old. By 13 she had written her first song, by 14 she had begun performing at open mic nights.

Early Lady Gaga gigs would see her perform as a duo with performance artist Lady Stardust. They would be billed as ‘Lady Gaga And The Starlight Revenue’.

Gaga denied that the recent protrusions from her body weren’t real. “Well, first of all they’re not prosthetics. They’re my bones,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “They’ve always been inside of me.”

The meat dress she wore to the VMA’s was made up of cheap meats. Peter Cacioppo, a butcher at Ottomanelli Brothers on New York’s Upper East Side, analysed the outfit and said: “There are no expensive cuts here, no real steaks. The best you’ve got is the flank steak on top of her head.”

As a child she said that she was inspired by the My Little Pony toys. “I was obsessed with the idea of a creature that was born with something magical that made them the misfit in the world of the stallion,” she said.

She was told by her school drama teachers that she was ‘too ethnic’ for success. She told the crowd at a recent Madison Square Gardens gig, that teachers would tell her: “You’ll never be the heroine, the blonde, the star. Your hair’s too dark, you look too ethnic.”

She got the stage name ‘Lady Gaga’ from one of her collaborators, producer Rob Fusari. It was a reference to Queen’s hit ‘Radio Ga Ga’, but it was accidental. “I typed ‘Radio Ga Ga’ in a text,” he said, “and it did autocorrect, so somehow ‘Radio’ got changed to ‘Lady’. She texted me back (and said): ’That’s it.’”

The diner used in the video for ‘Telephone’ is the same diner that appears in US cop show NCIS.

Gaga admitted that losing her virginity was ‘terrible’. She said: “I didn’t lost my virginity until I was 17. But I have to say even then I wasn’t ready and it was an absolutely terrible experience.”

Gaga made her catwalk debut at designer Nicola Formichetti’s Mugler fashion show in Paris in March.

Gaga appeared on a 2008 episode of The Hills. Before a performance her broken cat-suit zipper was fixed by ‘stars’ Whitney Port and Lauren Conrad.

Her sister Natali Germanotta makes a cameo in the ‘Telephone’ promo as a fellow prison inmate.

She once sent out for $1000 worth of Papa John’s pizza for her fans when she saw a number of them waiting for her outside a record shop where she was doing a signing.

She went to the same private school as celeb socialites Paris and Nicky Hilton. The Convent Of The Scared Heart is also the school that appears in the TV show Gossip Girl (in which Gaga made a cameo).

Her father, Joe Germanotta, pioneered the installation of wireless internet access in hotels when he started the company ‘Guest WiFi’ in 2002.

Gaga also recently revealed that her hair was falling out due to over-dying it. “I need a chemical haircut because my blonde hair is falling out,” she told People magazine.

Gaga admitted to being a borderline cocaine addict in her pre-fame years. She said: “It petrifies me when I think about laying in my apartment in New York with bed bugs and roaches on the floor and mirrors with cocaine everywhere.”

The tattoo on her inner left arm is a quote from her favourite philosopher Rainer Maria Rilke and translates into: “In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spears its roots the answer and ask yourself; must I write?”

She used to work in seedy clubs, “I was working in strip clubs when I was 18,” she said. “Girls from my background weren’t meant to turn into someone like me… My act was pretty wild. I’d wear black leather and dance to Black Sabbath, Guns N Roses and Faith No More. Very rock ‘n’ roll.”

She said that pot helps her with the songwriting process. “I still smoke a lot of pot when I write music,” she told 60 Minutes. “I’m not gonna like sugarcoat it for 60 Minutes that I’m some sober human being, ‘cause I’m not.”

She has said that she overcomes feeling vulnerable by giving herself pep talks. “When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24 year old girl. Then I say, ’Bitch, you’re Lady Gaga, you get up and walk the walk today’,” she told Rolling Stone.

Her favourite song on ‘The Fame’ was ‘Paparazzi’ and her favourite from ‘The Fame Monster’ was ‘Speechless’.

She’s a fan of Bruce Springsteen. “I’m actually really obsessed with Bruce Springsteen,” she said. “My father used to play a lot of Bruce Springsteen records when I was a kid and he was blue collar American.” The E Street Band’s Clarence Clemons plays on ‘Edge Of Glory’ from ‘Born This Way’.

Gaga uses Great Danes in her videos (they can be seen in the promos for ‘Paparazzi’, ‘Pokerface’, ‘Love Game’, ’Eh, Eh’, ‘Telephone’, ’Bad Romance’ and ‘Alejandro’).

Of her habit of carrying a purple teacup and saucer in public she said: “I drank tea with my mom (so teacups) make me feel at home.”

An early job saw her working at Interscope Records writing and co-writing songs for acts like The Pussycat Dolls, Fergie and New Kids On The Block. She recently wrote two tracks for Jennifer Lopez’s new album ‘Love?

Gaga’s been dissed by Christina Aguilera who said “I don’t know if it is a man or a woman.”

The singer called the unofficial ‘Baby Gaga’ ice cream (which is made by a London based company and includes breast milk as one of its main ingredients) “nausea inducing”.

Lady G says that her forthcoming perfume would ‘smell like an expensive hooker’. And added that, “We’ve taken blood out of my own blood sample for it.”

She said that she’d like The Wrestler actress Marisa Tomei to play her in a film of her life. ”I am such a Marisa Tomei fan, all my friends call me ‘Marisa’ when I get angry because my New York accent just flies out of my body.”

She was bullied at school. When she made the cover of Vogue, she Tweeted: “They used to call me ‘rabbit teeth’ in school and now I’m a real live VOGUE BEAUTY QUEEN.”

Gaga wasn’t always encouraged in her success. She said: “I had a boyfriend who told me I’d never have success, never be nominated for a Grammy, never have a hit song, and that he hoped I’d fail. I said to him, ‘Someday when we’re not together you won’t be able to order a cup of coffee at the fucking deli without hearing or seeing me’.’’

Her track ‘Telephone’ was written for Britney Spears and intended for use on her ‘Circus’ album, but it was dropped.

Snoop Dogg has said he wouldn’t like to bed Gaga. He told Blackbook: “She’s weird as fuck. Who knows, she might have a snake or a knife in her pussy if you try to get some from her.”

There’s a Star Wars reference in her video for ‘Telephone’. When she is making poison in the diner kitchen, some of the ingredients are from the film – ‘Fex-M3’ is from the Star Wars Extended Universe, ‘Meta-cyanide’ is from Dune and ‘Tiberium’ is from Command And Conquer.

She told People that she dyed her hair blonde because she was once mistaken for Amy Winehouse when she was a brunette. “I want to be known for my own look,” she said.

Gaga wrote ‘Born This Way’ quickly. “I wrote (the song) in 10 fucking minutes,” she told Vogue. “And it was a completely magical song. After I wrote it the gates just opened… it was like an immaculate conception.”

She has referenced brown eyes in more than one song, in ‘Brown Eyes’ from ‘The Fame’ and ‘Again, Again’ from her early ‘Red And Blue’ EP with its line: “You’ve got brown eyes like no-one else.”

She is the creative director of Polaroid.

Her drink of choice is a Jameson Irish Whiskey.

The heart tattoo on her left shoulder says, ‘Dad’, which she got because her father had heart surgery during the first leg of her North American Monster Ball tour. “I obsess about his health,” she told Vogue. “I ask my mother if he’s been smoking.”

She is only tattooed on one side of her body. “It was actually per my father’s request,” she said. “He asked that I remain, on one side, slightly normal. So I only have tattoos on my left side. I think he sees this as my Marilyn Monroe side and he sees this as my Iggy Pop side.”

She said she would never make a reality show. “You will never see me do reality television. Don’t even ask,” she said. “It will never happen. It’s just, I’m not that kind of person. My whole life is a performance piece.”

She flew the equivalent of five times around the world on her ‘Monster Ball’ tour. She tracked up 130,000 air miles in a year as she traveled to 78 cities.

She’s more NYC than LA. “I don’t like Los Angeles,” she said. “The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.”

She has said that she wouldn’t ever get plastic surgery. “I’ve never had plastic surgery. I think that promoting insecurity in the form of plastic surgery is infinitely more harmful than an artistic expression related to body modification,” she told Harper’s Bazaar.

She is godmother to Elton John and David Furnish’s baby Zachary. “That is true, it’s not a joke,” he said.

Gaga said she’s on the ‘drunk diet’. “I like to drink whiskey and stuff while I am working,” she said. “But the deal is I’ve got to work out everyday, and I work out hungover if I am hungover.”

As part of her childhood acting career she played the role of Adeleide in Guys And Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.

 

credits: nme.com

Here are the top 10 amazing facts about dreams.

10. Blind People Dream

People who become blind after birth can see images in their dreams. People who are born blind do not see any images, but have dreams equally vivid involving their other senses of sound, smell, touch and emotion. It is hard for a seeing person to imagine, but the body’s need for sleep is so strong that it is able to handle virtually all physical situations to make it happen.

9. You Forget 90% of your Dreams

Within 5 minutes of waking, half of your dream if forgotten. Within 10, 90% is gone. The famous poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, woke one morning having had a fantastic dream (likely opium induced) – he put pen to paper and began to describe his “vision in a dream” in what has become one of English’s most famous poems: Kubla Khan. Part way through (54 lines in fact) he was interrupted by a “Person from Porlock“. Coleridge returned to his poem but could not remember the rest of his dream. The poem was never completed.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
[...]

Curiously, Robert Louis Stevenson came up with the story of Doctor Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde whilst he was dreaming. Wikipedia has more on that here. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was also the brainchild of a dream.

8. Everybody Dreams

Every human being dreams (except in cases of extreme psychological disorder) but men and women have different dreams and different physical reactions. Men tend to dream more about other men, while women tend to dream equally about men and women. In addition, both men and women experience sexually related physical reactions to their dreams regardless of whether the dream is sexual in nature; males experience erections and females experience increased vaginal blood flow.

7. Dreams Prevent Psychosis

In a recent sleep study, students who were awakened at the beginning of each dream, but still allowed their 8 hours of sleep, all experienced difficulty in concentration, irritability, hallucinations, and signs of psychosis after only 3 days. When finally allowed their REM sleep the student’s brains made up for lost time by greatly increasing the percentage of sleep spent in the REM stage.

6. We Only Dream of What We Know

Our dreams are frequently full of strangers who play out certain parts – did you know that your mind is not inventing those faces – they are real faces of real people that you have seen during your life but may not know or remember? The evil killer in your latest dream may be the guy who pumped petrol in to your Dad’s car when you were just a little kid. We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces through our lives, so we have an endless supply of characters for our brain to utilize during our dreams.

5. Not Everyone Dreams in Color

A full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The remaining number dream in full color. People also tend to have common themes in dreams, which are situations relating to school, being chased, running slowly/in place, sexual experiences, falling, arriving too late, a person now alive being dead, teeth falling out, flying, failing an examination, or a car accident. It is unknown whether the impact of a dream relating to violence or death is more emotionally charged for a person who dreams in color than one who dreams in black and white

4. Dreams are not about what they are about

If you dream about some particular subject it is not often that the dream is about that. Dreams speak in a deeply symbolic language. The unconscious mind tries to compare your dream to something else, which is similar. Its like writing a poem and saying that a group of ants were like machines that never stop. But you would never compare something to itself, for example: “That beautiful sunset was like a beautiful sunset”. So whatever symbol your dream picks on it is most unlikely to be a symbol for itself.

3. Quitters have more vivid dreams

People who have smoked cigarettes for a long time who stop, have reported much more vivid dreams than they would normally experience. Additionally, according to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology: “Among 293 smokers abstinent for between 1 and 4 weeks, 33% reported having at least 1 dream about smoking. In most dreams, subjects caught themselves smoking and felt strong negative emotions, such as panic and guilt. Dreams about smoking were the result of tobacco withdrawal, as 97% of subjects did not have them while smoking, and their occurrence was significantly related to the duration of abstinence. They were rated as more vivid than the usual dreams and were as common as most major tobacco withdrawal symptoms.”

2. External Stimuli Invade our Dreams

This is called Dream Incorporation and it is the experience that most of us have had where a sound from reality is heard in our dream and incorporated in some way. A similar (though less external) example would be when you are physically thirsty and your mind incorporates that feeling in to your dream. My own experience of this includes repeatedly drinking a large glass of water in the dream which satisfies me, only to find the thirst returning shortly after – this thirst… drink… thirst… loop often recurs until I wake up and have a real drink. The famous painting above (Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening) by Salvador Dali, depicts this concept.

1. You are paralyzed while you sleep

Believe it or not, your body is virtually paralyzed during your sleep – most likely to prevent your body from acting out aspects of your dreams. According to the Wikipedia article on dreaming, “Glands begin to secrete a hormone that helps induce sleep and neurons send signals to the spinal cord which cause the body to relax and later become essentially paralyzed.”

Bonus: Extra Facts

1. When you are snoring, you are not dreaming.
2. Toddlers do not dream about themselves until around the age of 3. From the same age, children typically have many more nightmares than adults do until age 7 or 8.
3. If you are awakened out of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, you are more likely to remember your dream in a more vivid way than you would if you woke from a full night sleep.

 

credits : listverse.com

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Beside his creativity and genious mind, Picasso was known as a very strange and controversial man. Many people think that made him so famous…

1. Picasso’s Full Name Has 23 Words

Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso. He was named after various saints and relatives. The “Picasso” is actually from his mother, Maria Picasso y Lopez. His father is named Jose Ruiz Blasco.

2. When He Was Born, The Midwife Thought He Was Stillborn

Picasso had such a difficult birth and was such a weak baby that when he was born, the midwife thought that he was stillborn so she left him on a table to attend his mother. It was his uncle, a doctor named Don Salvador, that saved him:

‘Doctors at that time,’ he told Antonina Vallentin, ‘used to smoke big cigars, and my uncle was no exception. When he saw me lying there he blew smoke into my face. To this I immediately reacted with a grimace and a bellow of fury’”

3. Picasso’s First Word: Pencil

It’s like Picasso was born an artist: his first word was “piz,” short of lápiz the Spanish word for ‘pencil.’ His father Ruiz, an artist and art professor, gave him a formal education in art starting from the age of 7. By 13, Ruiz vowed to give up painting as he felt that Pablo had surpassed him. (Photo of Picasso as a 4-year-old-boy

4. Pablo’s First Drawing

Le Picador by Pablo Picasso (1890)

At the tender young age of 9, Picasso completed his first painting: Le picador, a man riding a horse in a bullfight.

La première communion (First Communion) by Pablo Picasso (1896)

His first major painting, an “academic” work is First Communion, featuring a portrait of his father, mother, and younger sister kneeling before an altar. Picasso was 15 when he finished it.

5. Picasso was a Terrible Student

No doubt about it, Picasso was brilliant: artistically, he was years ahead of his classmates who were all five to six years older than him. But Picasso chafed at being told what to do and he was often thrown into “detention”: “For being a bad student I was banished to the ‘calaboose’ – a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on. I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly … I could have stayed there forever drawing without stopping”

6. Picasso’s First Job

Picasso signed his first contract in Paris with art dealer Pere Menach, who agreed to pay him 150 francs per month (about US$750 today)

7. Did Picaso Steal The Mona Lisa?

Actually no, but in 1911, when the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, the police took in Picasso’s friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire fingered Picasso as a suspect, so the police hauled him in for questioning. Both were later released.

8. Cubism: Full of Little Cubes

In 1909, Picasso and French artist Georges Braque co-founded an art movement known as cubism. Actually, it was a French art critic Louis Vauxcelles who first called it “bizarre cubiques” or cubism, after noting that Picasso and Braque’s paintings are “full of little cubes.”

9. Picasso was a Playboy

Being a famous artist certainly helped Picasso get the girl. Girls, in fact – many, many girls. Here’s a short list of known wives and lovers of Picasso:

- Fernande Olivier (Picasso’s first love, she was 18?; he was 23)

- Marcelle Humbert AKA Eva Gouel (she was 27, Picasso was 31)

- Gaby Lespinasse (he was 34, I don’t know how old Gaby was, but she was young, that’s for sure!)

- Olga Khokhlova (Picasso’s first wife; she was 26 and he was 36 when they met)

- Marie-Thérèse Walter (she was 17, he was 46)

- Dora Maar (she was 29, Picasso was 55)

- Françoise Gilot (she was 21 when she met Picasso, who was 61)

- Geneviève Laporte (one of Picasso’s last lovers. She was in her mid-twenties and a French model of Picasso, who was in his seventies when the affair started)

- Jacqueline Roque (who became Picasso’s second wife. She was 27 and he was 79)

Le Rêve (The Dream) by Pablo Picasso (1932)

Marie-Thérèse Walter was Picasso’s model for Le Rêve. In 2006, casino magnate Steve Wynn agreed to sell the painting for $139 million, but accidentally put his elbow through the canvas the day before the sale was to be completed!

10. Picasso’s Car

Okay, It’s not exactly his car, but I couldn’t resist. Last year, 44-year-old mechanic Andy Saunders of Dorset, England, spent six months converting his old Citroen 2CV into a cubist work inspired by Pablo Picasso!

Guernica by Pablo Picasso (1937) - turned into 3D art by Lena Gieseke in 2008