1- The Aldabra Atoll
Aldabra is the world's second largest coral atoll after Kiritimati Atoll — also known as Christmas Atoll. It is located in the Aldabra Group of islands in the Indian Ocean, which form the Outer Islands of Seychelles. Uninhabited and remotely isolated, Aldabra is virtually untouched by humans.
It has distinctive island fauna including the Aldabra Giant Tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) with two thirds of their world population. The atoll is also the largest raised coral reef in the world with an elevation of 26 feet (7.9 m). Apart from the tortoises, there is a habitat for the biggest crab, the coconut crab; as well as a habitat for the Indian Ocean’s Aldabra Rail (Dryolimnas cuvieri), also known as The white-throated rail or Cuvier's rail — the only surviving flightless bird species of its kind in the world.
Sir David Attenborough has called the south western atoll of Aldabra “One of the wonders of the world”. It is also dubbed “The Crown Jewels of the Indian Ocean”.
This magical place was visited by Portuguese navigators in 1511. However, the islands were already known to the Arabs, from whom they get their name — originally Al-Hadra or Al-Khadra, meaning the green. In the middle of the 18th century, they became dependencies of the French colony of Réunion, from where expeditions were made for the capture of the giant tortoises.
Fortunately, Aldabra has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site since 1982. BirdLife International has equally declared it as an endemic bird area in 2001 on account of its large seabird colonies.
More wonders from Mother Nature can be found in the photo-article exposé The World’s Rare and Natural Phenomena.
2- Flies
During my many trips to Sinai over the years, I had to drive through the empty desert for 4.5 hours (440 kms/274 mi) to reach that dream destination. Depending on the weather, almost every time I stop to answer nature’s call I find a fly or two just appearing around me out of nowhere. This was bedazzling because if we think of the odds with the time/space factor, it shows that flies are almost everywhere all the time.
3- Male/Female Buttons
Have you ever wondered the reason behind this peculiar difference?
Well, when buttons were invented they were quite expensive and worn primarily by the rich. Since most people are right-handed, it is easier to push buttons on the right through holes on the left. Because wealthy women were dressed by maids and servants, dressmakers put the buttons on the maid’s right side! And that’s where women’s buttons have remained ever since. Ta-Da.
4- Checagou
The name “Chicago” is derived from a Canadian French rendering of the Native American word Shikaakwa, translated as “wild onion” or “wild garlic”. Its origin is the indigenous Miami-Illinois language, the Algonquian language; either Fox /sheka:ko:heki/ “place of the wild onion”, or Ojibwa shika:konk “at the skunk place” — sometimes rendered “place of the bad smell”. The Ojibwa “skunk” word is distantly related to the New England Algonquian word that yielded Modern English skunk, the noun.
On that same note, “Chicagoan” is from 1847 and “Chicagoian” from 1859.
Aldabra is the world's second largest coral atoll after Kiritimati Atoll — also known as Christmas Atoll. It is located in the Aldabra Group of islands in the Indian Ocean, which form the Outer Islands of Seychelles. Uninhabited and remotely isolated, Aldabra is virtually untouched by humans.
It has distinctive island fauna including the Aldabra Giant Tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) with two thirds of their world population. The atoll is also the largest raised coral reef in the world with an elevation of 26 feet (7.9 m). Apart from the tortoises, there is a habitat for the biggest crab, the coconut crab; as well as a habitat for the Indian Ocean’s Aldabra Rail (Dryolimnas cuvieri), also known as The white-throated rail or Cuvier's rail — the only surviving flightless bird species of its kind in the world.
Sir David Attenborough has called the south western atoll of Aldabra “One of the wonders of the world”. It is also dubbed “The Crown Jewels of the Indian Ocean”.
This magical place was visited by Portuguese navigators in 1511. However, the islands were already known to the Arabs, from whom they get their name — originally Al-Hadra or Al-Khadra, meaning the green. In the middle of the 18th century, they became dependencies of the French colony of Réunion, from where expeditions were made for the capture of the giant tortoises.
Fortunately, Aldabra has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site since 1982. BirdLife International has equally declared it as an endemic bird area in 2001 on account of its large seabird colonies.
More wonders from Mother Nature can be found in the photo-article exposé The World’s Rare and Natural Phenomena.
2- Flies
During my many trips to Sinai over the years, I had to drive through the empty desert for 4.5 hours (440 kms/274 mi) to reach that dream destination. Depending on the weather, almost every time I stop to answer nature’s call I find a fly or two just appearing around me out of nowhere. This was bedazzling because if we think of the odds with the time/space factor, it shows that flies are almost everywhere all the time.
So one day recently I remembered the memory and decided to Google the number of flies in the world. And they are 17 quadrillion (17,000,000,000,000,000 or 17 thousand million million) of them. That means for each one of us humans there are 2328767 flies. Insane, huh.
3- Male/Female Buttons
Have you ever wondered the reason behind this peculiar difference?
Well, when buttons were invented they were quite expensive and worn primarily by the rich. Since most people are right-handed, it is easier to push buttons on the right through holes on the left. Because wealthy women were dressed by maids and servants, dressmakers put the buttons on the maid’s right side! And that’s where women’s buttons have remained ever since. Ta-Da.
4- Checagou
The name “Chicago” is derived from a Canadian French rendering of the Native American word Shikaakwa, translated as “wild onion” or “wild garlic”. Its origin is the indigenous Miami-Illinois language, the Algonquian language; either Fox /sheka:ko:heki/ “place of the wild onion”, or Ojibwa shika:konk “at the skunk place” — sometimes rendered “place of the bad smell”. The Ojibwa “skunk” word is distantly related to the New England Algonquian word that yielded Modern English skunk, the noun.
While the town of Chicago was founded in 1833, the first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as “Checagou” was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir written about the time. Henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called “Chicagoua”, grew abundantly in the area.
During the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples. The 1780s saw the arrival of the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who was of African and European (French) descent.
In
1795, following the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part
of Chicago was turned over to the United States for a military post by
native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the
United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in the War
of 1812, Battle of Fort Dearborn and later rebuilt. The Ottawa, Ojibwe,
and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the U.S in
the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were eventually forcibly
removed from their land following the Treaty of Chicago in 1833.
And now you know.
5- Piggy Bank
During the 15th century in Europe, dishes and cookware [plates, bottles, vessels] were made of a dense orange clay called “Pygg”. When people saved coins in jars made of this clay, the jars became known as “Pygg Banks”. Later in the 18th century an English potter misunderstood the word, hence made a container resembling a pig. And it caught on. That is one theory.
According to another theory of origin, Etymologist Michael Quinion links piggy banks to Germany; because ancient ones have been found there — including one from the 13th century.
An additional theory states that piggy banks may have originated in China during the Qing dynasty; since pigs were a symbol of wealth and abundance in Chinese culture, people crafted pig-shaped vessels to store their coins.
One more theory takes the origin of piggy banks to Indonesia, due to 14th century vessels being found there.
What makes early piggy banks hard to study is the fact that they are rarely ever found. The reason lies in their very concept: They must be shattered in order to retrieve the coins they contain. Despite the above theories, no one knows where the first piggy bank came from or who was its creator.
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