Facts About Lítla Dímun Island Faroes Sheep And Trivia

Lítla Dímun is a small island between the islands of Suðuroy and Stóra Dímun in the Faroe Islands.

It is the smallest of the main 18 islands, being less than 100 hectares (250 acres) in area, and is the only uninhabited one. The island can be seen from the villages Hvalba and Sandvík.

The southern third of the island is sheer cliff, with the rest rising to the mountain of Slættirnir, which reaches 414 metres (1,358 ft). The island is only inhabited by feral sheep and seabirds

The name means "Little Dímun", in contrast to Stóra Dímun, "Great Dímun.

The island has never been inhabited by humans, but sheep were kept there from ancient times, being mentioned in the 13th century work Færeyinga Saga (Saga of the Faroese).

The saga also features the island as the site of a battle between Brestur, father of Sigmundur and Gøtuskeggjar.

The battle resulted in the death of Sigmund's father and his men and the deportation of Sigmund to Norway, where he befriended Olaf Trygvasson.

n 1918 The Danish schooner Caspe, carrying a cargo of salt, was driven onto Lítla Dímun by a gale. The six crew were able to reach a narrow ledge just above the surf, but they had no stores, and the captain was severely injured.

Eventually they managed to move from the ledge, and found a cabin half-way up the island which had matches, fuel and a lamp.

They caught two sheep and a sick bird, and were able to survive for seventeen days before being discovered and rescued by a fishing boat. One of the shipwrecked sailors settled in the Faroes.

Facts About Faroes Sheep

The sheep now living on the island are Faroes sheep, but until the mid-nineteenth century it was occupied by feral sheep, probably derived from the earliest sheep brought to Northern Europe in the Neolithic Period. The last of these very small, black, short-wooled sheep were shot in the 1860s. They were similar in appearance and origin to the surviving Soay sheep, from the island of Soay in the St Kilda archipelago off the west coast of Scotland.

The modern Faroes sheep of the island are gathered each autumn. People sail to the island in a fishing boat, towing several rowing skiffs. About 40 people then form a chain across the island, driving the 200 or so sheep into a pen on the north side of the island. The sheep are then caught, restrained by tying their feet together, put in nets five at a time and lowered by ropes to the skiffs. Each skiff then takes its load of 15 sheep to the fishing boat, which returns to the island of Suðuroy. The sheep are unloaded on the wharf in the village of Hvalba, where they are placed in rows and distributed to their owners. A few sheep escape the gathering, and from time to time these are shot.

Facts About Steve Jobs Apple Co-founder And Trivia

Steve Jobs (1955-2011) is the CEO of Apple, which he co-founded in 1976.

On November 27, 2007, Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by Fortune Magazine.

Apple Inc. co-founder and Chief Executive Steve Jobs will be taking a medical leave until the end of June - just a week after the cancer survivor tried to assure investors and employees his recent weight loss was caused by an easily treatable hormone deficiency.

He is considered a leading figure in both the computer and entertainment industries.

Steve Jobs announced on January 5, 2009 that his rapid weight loss was due to a "hormone imbalance that has been 'robbing' [him] of the proteins [his] body needs to be healthy."

Steve Jobs worked for Atari, Inc., a leading corporation in the electronic arcade recreation, as a video game designer in 1974.

He was portrayed by Noah Wyle in Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999).

Steve was born to John Jandali and Joanne Carole Schieble. A week after he was born, his parents put him up for adoption.

Steve and his wife are both strict vegans, eating no animal products whatsoever.

Steve attended Reed College, but dropped out after the first semester.

Steve married Laurene Powell on March 18, 1991. They have 3 children together.

Steve graduated from Homestead High School in 1972.

Some Steve Jobs Quotes

Steve Jobs: I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.

Steve Jobs: It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.

Steve Jobs: Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don't know any better.

Steve Jobs: Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Steve Jobs: (talking about future developments) Well, you know us. We never talk about future products. There used to be a saying at Apple: Isn't it funny? A ship that leaks from the top. So, I don't wanna perpetuate that. So I really can't say.

Steve Jobs: If we give people an alternative to Microsoft, it will have been a greater good.

Steve Jobs: (what the CEO does) I don't know. Head janitor?

Steve Jobs: (talking about the assassination of John Kennedy) I remember John Kennedy being assassinated. I remember the exact moment that I heard he had been shot.

Steve Jobs: (talking about the documentary, Triumph of Nerds) What can I say? I hired the wrong guy. He destroyed everything I spent 10 years working for; starting with me, but that wasn't the saddest part. I would have gladly left Apple if Apple would have turned out like I wanted it to.

Martha Graham's 117 Birthday And Facts - strangefacts

• Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 - April 1, 1991), an American dancer and choreographer, known as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance

• Martha Graham is to modern dance as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is to the modern art school of cubism Indeed, for many dance connoisseurs, Martha Graham is synonymous with modern dance

• She developed innovations in structure, style, technique, costuming, and in the training of choreographers and dancers that defined the movement

• She rejected the traditional view of women dancers as beautiful, lithe, and graceful, and instead she viewed female dancers as powerful and intense

• Her colleagues have described her long career as an American archetype, because with only a few exceptions, only Graham herself—or her company—ever performed her compositions, making Graham one of the most individualistic dance artists of the 20th century

• Born on May 11, 1894, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and raised in Santa Barbara, California, Graham began her formal training at Denishawn School of Dance, a Los Angeles academy started by the dancer Ruth St. Denis (1879-1968) and her partner Ted Shawn (1891-1972)

• In 1923, Graham left Los Angeles to join the Greenwich Village Follies in New York, specializing in exotic Spanish and Indian dances

• She taught dance for two years at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, all the while preparing herself for her debut as a soloist in 1926

• Martha Graham gave birth to modern dance, in the sense that she changed people’s minds about what dancers—especially female dancers—could do

• Whereas traditionally, female dancers had been used by choreographers to symbolize beauty and decoration, Graham de-sentimentalized the female body by emphasizing its power, intensity, and, in her fall sequences, its recovery from defeat 
  

Osama Bin Laden Facts - strangefacts

• Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In a 1998 interview, he gave his birth date as March 10, 1957

• His father, Muhammed bin Laden, was killed in 1967 in an airplane crash in Saudi Arabia when his American pilot misjudged a landing

• According to CNN national security correspondent David Ensore, as of 2002 bin Laden had married four women and fathered roughly 25 or 26 children

• Actor Bruce Willis has offered $1,000,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaida terror leaders

• According to Sudanese author Kola Boof, Osama Bin Laden is a big fan of pop Diva Whitney Houston

• Dom Jolly out of Trigger TV went to school with Osama Bin Laden

• Osama Bin Laden is the 17th of 57 children and the bounty on Osama Bin Laden is $50 million

• Real or not, Osama Bin Laden had a Facebook account that was deleted for security reasons

• 56.5 million viewers watched President Obama's speech on May 1, 2011 announcing the death of Osama bin Laden

• Osama Bin Laden never returned balls hit over his fence where he killed

• Osama Bin Laden drank lots of Pepsi and Coke and he grew (and likely smoked) marijuana

Facts About Don Juan Pond - strangefacts

• Don Juan Pond, the hypersaline lake in western Antarctica which has even greater salinity than the Dead Sea

• With a salinity of over 40%, Don Juan Pond is the saltiest body of water in the world

• It is named after the two pilots who first investigated the pond in 1961, Lt Don Roe and Lt John Hickey

• It is a small lake, only 100m by 300m, and on average 0.1m deep, but it is so salty that even in the Antarctic, where the temperature at the pond regularly drops to as low as -30 degrees Celsius, it never freezes

• It is 18 times saltier than sea water, compared to the Dead Sea which is only 8 times saltier than sea water

• At its saltiest, Don Juan Pond contains 671 parts per thousand salt, compared to 35 and 300 for the ocean and the Dead Sea respectively

• A beautiful salty pool in Antarctica's Dry Valleys is teaching scientists about the potential for life in brine pools on ancient Mars

• The study also reveals a previously unreported mechanism for producing an important greenhouse gas - nitrous oxide - in Antarctic habitats

• Research at Antarctica's 'Mars on Earth' reveals non-organic mechanism for production of important greenhouse gas

• Possibly even more important, the discovery could help space scientists understand the meaning of similar brine pools in a place whose ecosystem most closely resembles that of Don Juan Pond

Facts About John James Audubon - strangefacts

• John James Audubon from 1785 to1851 was an American Woodsman

• John James Audubon was not the first person to attempt to paint and describe all the birds of America (Alexander Wilson has that distinction), but for half a century he was the young country’s dominant wildlife artist

• His seminal Birds of America, a collection of 435 life-size prints, quickly eclipsed Wilson’s work and is still a standard against which 20th and 21st century bird artists, such as Roger Tory Peterson and David Sibley, are measured

• Although Audubon had no role in the organization that bears his name, there is a connection: George Bird Grinnell, one of the founders of the early Audubon Society in the late 1800s, was tutored by Lucy Audubon, John James’s widow

• Knowing Audubon’s reputation, Grinnell chose his name as the inspiration for the organization’s earliest work to protect birds and their habitats

• Today, the name Audubon remains synonymous with birds and bird conservation the world over

• John James Audubon was enrolled in the French Naval Academy at he age of 14

• He was also a limner (traveling portrait artist), dance instructor, clerk and taxidermist

• In 1819 he was briefly jailed for failing to pay his debts

• Audubon was born in Saint Domingue (now Haiti), the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and plantation owner and his French mistress. Early on, he was raised by his stepmother, Mrs. Audubon, in Nantes, France, and took a lively interest in birds, nature, drawing, and music

• In 1803, at the age of 18, he was sent to America, in part to escape conscription into the Emperor Napoleon’s army. He lived on the family-owned estate at Mill Grove, near Philadelphia, where he hunted, studied and drew birds, and met his wife, Lucy Bakewell

Facts About Rotorua - strangefacts

• A city founded in the early 1870s and named after Lake Rotorua whose Maori name means ‘Second Lake’ from roto ‘lake’ and rua ‘two’ or ‘second’

• It is said that it was so named by a traveller as he went along the Kaituna River; the first was Lake Rotoiti ‘Small Lake’. However, this may be a convenient invention to justify claims to the area by the local tribe

• The city of Rotorua, about 30 miles (48 km) inland on the Volcanic Plateau, is noted for the geysers, fumaroles, boiling mud, and warm mineral bathing pools in its vicinity

• Rotorua sits squarely on the Pacific Ring of Fire, so volcanic activity is part of the city’s past and present

• The city is also the tribal home of the Te Arawa people, who settled in lakeside geothermal areas more than 600 years ago

• Entertaining in any weather, and at any time of the year, Rotorua promises to keep you captivated with geothermal phenomena and special cultural experiences

• Geysers, boiling mud pools, marae stays, hangi feasts, an authentic pre-European Maori village and indulgent spa therapies will provide plenty of content for your emails home

• Rotorua also has a well-developed adventure culture – everything from sky diving to zorbing

• Functional facts: Approx. population 76,000, i-SITE Visitor Centre, domestic airport

• Rotorua is a city on the southern shores of the lake of the same name, in the Bay of Plenty region of the North Island of New Zealand

• The city is known for its geothermal activity, with a number of geysers, notably the Pohutu Geyser at Whakarewarewa, and boiling mud pools (pictured above) located in the city