Genetically engineered human kidney cell shoots laser beam

Researchers have engineered a human kidney cell able to produce a directed green laser beam when struck by weak blue light. Don't get your spandex out just yet though -- it might be some years before you're able to shoot lasers out of your eyes.

Implanting DNA from a jellyfish into the cell, Malte Gather and Seok-Hyun Yun of Harvard University set about creating the first 'living' laser, according to the New Scientist. By altering the cell's genetic code, scientists forced the poor ickle bag of cytoplasm and organelles to produce a green fluorescent protein.

Unseen Rare Indian Rupee Currency Notes

First train journey in india !

This historic journey took place between Bombay and Thane, a distance of 34 kms.  On 16th Apr 1853 at 3.30 PM 400 distinguished guests, boarded the train with 14 railway carriage which were hauled by three locomotives namely Sultan, Sindh and Sahib.

The journey took 57 minutes, with a brief halt just beyond Sion for water.These three locomotives belonged to the batch of eight ordered from the Vulcan Foundry by the Great Indian Peninsular Railway (GIP) (now Central Railways) in 1852.


Some Other Interesting Facts of Indian Railways

• Indian Railway is world’s largest employer with 1,646,704 staff.
• Indian Railway is the second largest railway of the world, and first in Asia.
• A.H. Wheeler and Co launched their Indian Railway Library in 1888.

Facts about Indian Coins !

Indian coins are mainly produced in 4 cities

1. Delhi
2. Mumbai
3. Hyderabad
4. Kolkata

The production in city puts an identification mark under the year of issue. Coins produced in:

1. Delhi – have a dot
2. Mumbai – have a diamond
3. Hyderabad – have a star
4. Kolkata – Nothing beneath the year

The US has the most English speakers of any country. A close second? INDIA.

There are 251,388,301 English speakers in the United States, and India doesn't lag too far behind with 232,000,000, though the vast majority of those English speakers in India speak it as a second or third language.

That number (232 Million) is nearly 4 times the number of English speakers in the United Kingdom (59.6 Million). The UK is in 4th place for number of English speakers, behind the US, India and Nigeria. The rest of the top 10 in order are:

#5 Phillipines
#6 Germany
#7 CANADA 
#8 France
#9 AUSTRALIA
#10 a tie between Italy and Pakistan

8 Year Old Serial Killer In India

Amarjeet Sada was accused of killing at least three babies, including his eight-month-old sister and a cousin sister. Police say the boy strangled and smashed the heads of the babies with bricks & then tried to hide the bodies.

One Day Breathing in Bombay Equivalent to 100 Cigarettes a Day

Everyone’s heard the scary statistic of one day breathing in Bombay is equivalent to so many cigarettes a day. Or maybe you’ve heard one day breathing in Bombay is equivalent to 2.5 packs a day. Well it turns out that the original “one day breathing in Bombay is equivalent to two and a half packs a day” didn’t come from research and studies but from Suketu Mehta. Check this out: Even a UN report quotes the same number!

India qualified for the 1950 World Cup, but they refused to go.

The reason? Apparently, they didn't really understand what the World Cup was, so they decided not to attend. The official reason given by the All India Football Federation was that there was insufficient practice time and disagreements over team selection.

Indian Football Team captain Sailen Manna had this to say, "We had no idea about the World Cup then. Had we been better informed, we would have taken the initiative ourselves. For us, the Olympics was everything. There was nothing bigger."

In fact, the Indian team had already competed in the Olympics in 1948.

The story that they didn't play because FIFA didn't let them play barefoot is a myth. They competed in the 1952 Olympics while barefoot. 

You share your birthday with approximately 18 million people worldwide.

If we assume an equal probability of being born any day of the year (not counting February 29th), every person shares their birth date with about 1/365 of any given population.

Therefore, you sing 'Happy Birthday' on the same day as approximately 824,456 Americans, 3 million Indians, and 3.6 million Chinese. However, you would only be singing with 2 or 3 residents of Vatican City! 

A man was arrested with 2,060 diamonds in his stomach.

The man was attempting to smuggle the stones from Sri Lanka to India, but authorities were able to apprehend him at the airport after receiving a tip.

The police initially had trouble finding the evidence, but the man's discomfort during questioning indicated the true location of the stones. It took SIX HOURS for the man to excrete the 42 condoms filled with an estimated $337,000 to $674,000 of jewels! 

A man kidnapped himself for $40,000 ransom.

21-year-old Pawan Verma from India was attempting to raise money for an expensive vacation. He staged his own kidnapping and demanded $40,000 from his family. Mr. Verma was arrested when he showed up to retrieve his own ransom money. 

An Indian man spent 18 years trying to prove he was alive after he was declared dead.

Lal Bihari from Uttar Pradesh found out that in 1976 he was declared dead. After this discovery he had to struggle for years to get the government to recognize that he was still alive. Revenue officials ignored him, so he tried a number of drastic steps to be recognized by the government. This included passing out leaflets, running for office, insulting judges and public officials, organizing his own funeral and demanding a widow's pension for his wife. He even went so far as kidnapping, threatening murder, and other attempts to get arrested, just so his name would have to appear on the books. 

Why did this happen? As Bihari found out, he was a victim of a not-too-uncommon practice in his home district of Azamgarh, which is overcrowded and where competition for land is fierce. Relatives of landowners (in Bihari's case, his uncle) can declare their relatives dead in the Land Registry Office and inherit their property. Bihari met at least 100 other people who fell victim to the same scheme, and founded an organization called "The Association of the Dead" to fight on behalf of people who were wrongfully declared dead. Since finally having his official death annulled in 1994, Bihari has dedicated his time to protecting people in similar circumstances. He also has taken on the title "Mritak" so his full name is now Lal Bihari Mritak or "Lal Bihari the Dead". 

Akrit Jaswal has been a surgeon since he was 7 !

Akrit is now 17 years old, and is currently working on his master’s degree. That means, he’s not a real doctor. However, he has been performing surgery in India since he was 7 years old, when he operated on a burn victim’s hands. Akrit says that he hopes some day to come up with a cure for cancer. He is considered a genius, having learned to talk at 10 months old, to read at 2 years old, and to read English (Shakespeare!) at 5 years old. He also entered college at the tender young age of 12!

The Indian Court System is 466 years behind schedule!

There are so many cases that have yet to be heard, that it will an estimated 466 years to recover from all the backlog. Just for example, the Delhi High Court spends a paltry 5 minutes on average on every case it hears, but even racing through the cases like that isn’t going to stem the flow of judicial backlog. The court is still waiting to hear tens of thousands of cases, some of which have been delayed for 20 years. This is partly because there are not enough judges in India. There are about 11 judges for every million people in the country.

World's Oldest Living Tree -- 9550 Years Old -- Discovered In Sweden

This 9,550 year old spruce has been discovered in Dalarna, Sweden. A favourable climate has produced an upright

trunk since the beginning of the 1940s.

The Shell Oil Company used to be a company that sold sea shells !

Marcus Samuel was a London antique dealer who discovered a demand for sea shells from the Far East. He started importing the shells, and eventually created an import/export business that would eventually become “Shell Transport and Trading Company”. Marcus Samuel passed the company to his two sons, Marcus Samuel Jr. and the unfortunately named Samuel Samuel. In the advent of the internal combustion engine in the 19th Century, the Samuel brothers decided to get into the oil shipping business. For decades Shell’s business primarily consisted of buying oil in Russia and shipping it across the world. In 1907, Shell merged with Royal Dutch Petroleum to become Royal Dutch Shell, which is now one of the largest oil companies in the world.

Amazing Rare and Newly Discovered Species

Really Weird Sea Creature

5ft long 100lbs Giant Piranha

You probably all know the famous fisherman from Animal Planet’s River Monsters, Jeremy Wade.

While he was on a fishing expedition with his crew in Africa, up the Congo River, the British angler made an amazing and rarely catch : he grappled with a giant piranha and managed to defeat the monster after a serious fight.

The result was astonishing as the 52-year-old fisherman pulled out of water a 5ft long goliath tigerfish and held it with both arms for fear of being bitten by its 32 razor-sharp teeth that have the same dimensions as those of a white shark. The goliath tigerfish is well known as being one of the most dangerous freshwater fish in the world, so Wade said he was extremely cautious when he pulled it out of water.

The 100lbs monster hasn’t been caught more than a few times before because of its ferocity and its habitat, which is very hard to reach. The giant piranha seems to consume prey the same size at itself and there have been cases when others have seen it tearing apart crocodiles or even people.

Jeremy Wade’s catch, the “giant piranha”, can easily be on top when we talk about world’s most terrifying creatures.