Mildly interesting
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So adorable.
Link to video -
Quite the arm workout for that guy!
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In Kazakhstan's majestic Tian Shan mountains lies the birthplace of every apple you've ever eaten. These ancient forests are home to Malus sieversii, the wild ancestor of all modern apple varieties.
Long before the Silk Road connected East and West, bears and birds spread apple seeds throughout these pristine mountain ranges. When traders eventually discovered these sweet mountain fruits, they carried them across continents, leading to natural hybridization with other wild species.
The legacy of these ancient apples lives on in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, whose name literally means "Father of Apples." But time hasn't been kind to these precious forests - today, only 1% of the original wild apple forests remain in their ancestral home.
These hardy mountain trees gave rise to the thousands of apple varieties we enjoy today - from the crisp Honeycrisp to the tart Granny Smith. Their genetic diversity holds the key to developing disease-resistant and climate-adaptable apples for future generations.
Sources: Research by Soviet scientist Nikolai Vavilov (1929), Kazakh geneticist Aimak Dzangaliev's studies, The Royal Horticultural Society
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"Sealed by a landslide for 21,000 years, the Chauvet Cave’s walls pulse with the oldest known paintings—lions, rhinos, and galloping horses frozen in torchlight. A time capsule from the Ice Age, untouched until 1994. Who else feels the whisper of Paleolithic genius? Artists scraped walls clean before painting and used torch flicker to make beasts appear to move—proto-cinema 30,000 years early!
#ChauvetCave #FirstArtists"
In 1994, three French speleologists squeezed through a narrow cliffside tunnel near the Ardèche River—and stumbled into a cathedral of prehistoric art. The Chauvet Cave’s walls, preserved by a perfectly timed landslide around 19,000 BCE, bore over 400 animals painted with charcoal and ochre: stampeding woolly rhinos, dueling cave lions, even a 10-meter-long panel of horses flowing like a Paleolithic filmstrip.
Radiocarbon dating shocked the world: these were twice as old as Lascaux, painted when Neanderthals still roamed Europe. The artists used cave contours to create 3D effects (a bison’s head emerging from a rock bulge), and footprints of an 8-year-old child—perhaps an apprentice—remain fossilized in the clay. -
Ian Fleming, who was a keen bird watcher living in Jamaica, was familiar with ornithologist James Bond's book "Birds of the West Indies," and chose the name of its author for the hero of "Casino Royale" in 1953, apparently because he wanted a name that sounded "as ordinary as possible." Fleming wrote to the real Bond's wife, "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born. In return,'' Fleming wrote, ''I can only offer you or James Bond unlimited use of the name Ian Fleming for any purposes you may think fit. Perhaps one day your husband will discover a particularly horrible species of bird which he would like to christen in an insulting fashion by calling it Ian Fleming.'' He also contacted the real James Bond about using his name in the books, and Bond replied to him, "Fine with it."
At some point during one of Fleming's visits to Jamaica, he met the real Bond and his wife, as shown in a made-for-DVD documentary about Fleming. A short clip was shown with Fleming, Bond and his wife. Also in his novel "Dr. No", Fleming referenced Bond's work by basing a large ornithological sanctuary on Dr. No's island in the Bahamas.
In 1964, Fleming gave Bond a first edition copy of "You Only Live Twice" signed, "To the real James Bond, from the thief of his identity." In December 2008 the book was put up for auction, eventually fetching $84,000. (Wikipedia/New York Times)
Happy Birthday, James Bond!
