Interesting
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The “tradition” of spending several months salary on an engagement ring was a marketing campaign created by De Beers in the 1930’s. Before WWII, only 10% of engagement rings contained diamonds. By the end of the 20th Century, 80% did.
The idea was embedded in popular culture in the West by an advertising drive from the De Beers diamond cartel that started in the lean years of the 1930s. The Depression was a disaster for De Beers, which controlled 60% of rough diamond output. De Beers embarked on what it now describes as a “substantial” campaign, linking diamonds with engagement.
Prior to the 1930s, presenting a woman with a diamond engagement ring was not the norm. Even on the eve of World War Two, a mere 10% of engagement rings contained diamonds. By the end of the 20th Century, 80% did.
Picture of the Day
Picture of the Day
NYC Taxi Medallion
A taxi medallion, also known as a CPNC (Certificate of Public Necessity and Convenience), is a transferable permit in the United States allowing a taxi driver to operate. A number of major cities in the US use these in their taxi licensing systems, including New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Medallions may be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The New York medallions are the most valuable, once peaking at over one million dollars. With the introduction of peer-to-peer ridesharing services, the taxi industry has faced competition, and the price of medallions has dropped substantially.
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Photo credit: Margaret Burin
This proud Aboriginal elder travelled1864 miles just to be at his grand daughter’s graduation
An Aboriginal elder traveled 2,000 miles from a remote island in north-east Arnhem Land to Healesville, Australia, to perform a special dance with his granddaughter at her college graduation.
Gali Yalkarriwuy Gurruwiwi flew from Galiwin’ku on Elcho Island to Worawa Aboriginal College in Healesville, north-east of Melbourne, where his granddaughter Sasha has been boarding for the past two and a half years.
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A divorcing couple divides their Beanie Baby investment under the supervision of a judge
Nov 5, 1999, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA: Attorney Frank Totti looks over papers while his client Frances Mountain sorts out Beanie Babies with her ex-husband Harold Mountain in Judge Gerald Hardcastle’s Family Courtroom in Las Vegas November 5. The couple, who were divorced four months ago, were ordered to divide up the collection valued at $2,500 to $5000 but were unable to do so by themselves. The collection was ordered spread on the court floor and divided up one by one under the supervision of Family Court Judge Hardcastl
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A man trapped in a coma for 12 years was aware of everything. His hatred of Barney reruns constantly playing helped him to regain control of his mind
“I cannot even express to you how much I hated Barney,” Martin says.
Since all the world thought Martin was a vegetable, at the special care center where he spent his days he was often in front of the TV watching reruns of the children’s cartoon hour after hour, day after day.
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30mm round from a General Electric GAU-8/A Avenger, which is a hydraulically driven seven-barrel Gatling-type auto cannon that arms an A-10 Warthog. The Avenger fires these anti-tank rounds at a rate of 3,600 rounds per minute
The GAU-8 Avenger fires up to sixty one-pound bullets a second. It produces almost five tons of recoil force, which is crazy considering that it’s mounted in a type of plane (the A-10 “Warthog”) whose two engines produce only four tons of thrust each. If you put two of them in one aircraft, and fired both guns forward while opening up the throttle, the guns would win and you’d accelerate backward. To put it another way: If I mounted a GAU-8 on my car, put the car in neutral, and started firing backward from a standstill, I would be breaking the interstate speed limit in less than three seconds. (source)