A hitchhiking robot that relied on the kindness of strangers to travel the world was found with its head and arms ripped off, just two weeks into its first American tour.
The child-sized robot, known as hitchBOT, was found damaged beyond repair on the streets of Philadelphia early on Saturday. It had earlier hitched across the entire of Canada for 26 days and completed a hitchhiking adventure through Germany.
The robot started its journey across the USA on 17 July in Salem, Massachusetts and visited Boston and New York City before being found dismembered on the streets of Philadelphia. A photo on Twitter showed hitchBOT lying in the dirt with its head missing and arms ripped off.
For each episode of his show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives host Guy Fieri invites a family from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. For 363 episodes, he’s made it a point to ensure the whole family’s is invited, not just the child battling an illness. “We don’t want to single a kid out,” he explained.
Fieri’s filmed 363 episodes to date, and for each one, he’s invited a family from an organization close to his heart: Make-A-Wish. “I know what the family is going through, to some degree,” he told us last summer, when discussing his sister’s battle with cancer. “I know that heartache and I see that, and if there’s anything I can do to help enlighten or empower those kids, I want to do it.”
It’s something he does for every show he stars in, including Guy’s Big Bite and Guy’s Grocery Games, and he makes it a point to ensure the whole family’s invited, not just the child battling an illness. “We don’t want to single a kid out,” he explained.
A Chinese father hired a ‘hitman’ to kill his son’s character in online games so that he would stop playing games and get himself a job.
A Chinese father fed up with his son’s unemployed ways — which he blamed on his daily feed of video games — hired a virtual “hit man” to knock off the 23-year-old and hopefully give him the motivation to get off the couch and seek a job.
The man, named only as Mr. Feng, lives with his son, Xiao Feng, in central China and reached out to an online high-level player to kill his son’s character every time his name surfaces in the game online, the Daily Mail reported.
He told the Sanging Daily that his son started playing video games in high school and has since faced difficulty holding down a job.
The younger Mr. Feng learned of the plot when he started getting targeted while playing and asked why.
But the plot didn’t work. The 23-year-old told his father: “I can play or I can not play, it doesn’t bother me. I’m not looking for any job — I want to take some time to find one that suits me,”
In an effort to reduce the high number of suicides on South Korea’s Mapo Bridge, it was unofficially renamed the Bridge of Life. It was decorated with positive affirmations and even sympathetic sculptures. Suicides increased sixfold the following year.
In 2007, a nine-year-old Jack Russell Terrier named George sacrificed himself to save five children from an attack by two Pit Bulls. All three dogs had to be euthanized, but George was posthumously awarded a PDSA Gold Medal and his heroism was commemorated with a bronze statue
Elvis Presley once flew from Graceland to Denver and back in one night just for a sandwich. ‘The Fool’s Gold Loaf’ is a hollowed out loaf of bread filled with peanut butter, jelly, and a pound of bacon. It has an estimated 8,000 calories
The sandwich consists of a single warmed, hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with the contents of one jar of creamy peanut butter, one jar of grape jelly, and a pound of bacon.
Jack Nicholson grew up thinking his grandmother was his mother and his mother was his sister. He was an illegitimate child, and his mother was 18 years old when she gave birth. Nicholson’s mother, Jane Frances Nicholson, was a showgirl who married an Italian-American man before knowing he was already married. It is believed that her agent may have been Nicholson’s father, though that is not sure. As she was unmarried and uncertain of the father’s identity, her parents brought Nicholson up as their own son and claimed his mother and her sister were his two elder sisters. He didn’t find out the truth until he was 37 when in 1974 researchers from Time magazine uncovered the truth and informed him about it. By that time, both his mother and grandmother had died. He later said that hearing the news was: “a pretty dramatic event, but it wasn’t what I’d call traumatizing…I was pretty well psychologically formed.”
Mozart’s sister, Maria Anna Mozart, was a musical genius just like her brother and sometimes received top billing over her brother when they toured as children. But once she became a marriageable age, her parents forced her to stop performing and settle down.
Maria Anna Mozart, the older sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was a talented musician just like him. When Mozart was a toddler, Maria Anna (four and one-half years older) was his idol. Her father Leopold Mozart started teaching her to play the harpsichord when she was seven years old. According to Maynard Solomon, “At three, Mozart was inspired to study music by observing his father’s instruction of Marianne; he wanted to be like her.”
To showcase Maria’s and her brother’s talent, their father took them on tours of many cities such as Vienna and Paris. She was noted as an excellent harpsichord player and fortepianist. In the early days, she sometimes received top billing. But from the age of 18, her parents forbid her from touring and showcasing her artistic talent. This was because according to societal expectations at that time, a girl of marriageable age should settle down.
The Chinese were the first to invent paper money in the 7th century
Paper currency began to develop during the Tang Dynasty because the merchants and wholesalers preferred paper so they could avoid having to carry copper coinage during large commercial transactions. By 960 CE, the Song Dynasty. being short of copper, started issuing and generally circulating notes in lieu of actual copper with a promise to redeem them later. The central government soon saw the economy of using paper money, and by the early 12th century, 26 million strings of the cash-coins worth of banknotes were printed annually.
By the 13th century, the idea of paper money was brought from China to Europe by travelers such as Marco Polo and William of Rubruck. The European banks soon warmed up to the concept and started issuing individually written banknotes with the name of the payee and cashier’s signature. In 1695, the Bank of England became the first bank to start a permanent issue of banknotes to raise money for the war against France.
After the wars waged by Louis XIV left France in a dearth of precious metals, banknotes were established as a formal currency. By the mid-19th century, the Bank of England gradually moved to standardized notes with fixed denominations that would pay any bearer the mentioned amount.
• Don't insult other visitors. Offensive comments will be deleted without warning.
• Comments are accepted in English only.
• No swearing words in comments, otherwise such comments will be censored.
• Your nickname and avatar are randomly selected. If you don't post comments for 7 days, they both are reset.
• To choose another avatar, click the ‘Random avatar’ link.
