Page 56 - Other Facts

Have you ever wondered exactly what the Beast from Beauty and the Beast is supposed to be? Read on!

Beauty and the Beast is a fairy tale about a man who is turned into a horrific beast by a witch, and to be turned back into his human form must fall in love. While the Beast’s makeup isn’t really that important to the story, in the Disney version his appearance seems to be a combination of animals- which it is.

The supervising animator in the Disney film, Glen Keane, describes the beast as being not based off of one animal, but being a chimaera, meaning he is multiple animals. Specifically, he has the head structure and horns of a buffalo, the arms and body of a bear, the eyebrows of a gorilla, the mouth and mane of a lion, the tusks of a wild boar and the legs and tail of a wolf. He’s also meant to resemble a cross between a minotaur and a werewolf.

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Minesweeper received criticism for being offensive to mine victims and now has a flower mode!

Minesweeper is a Microsoft single-player video game. The object of the game is to clear an abstract minefield without uncovering a mine. The game has been used in a number of platform systems, but Windows is the most common. The game is quite simple, but extremely addicting. There is strategy involved and winning the game isn’t that easy.

In 2001, the Italian International Campaign to Ban Winmine strongly complained about the game. They claimed that the game was offensive to victims of landmines and all those who risk their lives to clear them. So, they created their own “Winflower” game. They lobbied Microsoft to use their game in Windows 98 instead of Minesweeper.

Microsoft took notice of the criticism and included the alternate version in Windows Vista and Windows 7 offers a mode where you can interchange mines with flowers.

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A human Cyclops was born in India!

A baby boy was born with only one eye in the very center of his head and no nose. Doctors were amazed when the c-section of 34-year-old Veena Chavan was complete and her child was a Cyclops. A sonogram had revealed in the 32nd week that the child was hydrocephalic, meaning there was water accumulating in the brain, but they never expected to see the results that occurred. Unfortunately, the child only survived one day.

Chavan said, “I was told that the baby had water in the brain but never had I expected the baby to be born with one eye and no nose.” Doctors said that the baby most likely suffered from a rare form of cyclopia, which surprisingly affects one in every 250 embryos.

Cyclopia changes the development of the front of the brain causing the eyes and nose to not form properly. This particular case, however, was extremely severe resulting in the child’s premature death.

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There’s a swath of land in West Virginia where cell phones and WiFi signals are banned!

Sugar Grove is the name of an American government communications site in West Virginia. It’s run by the National Security Agency. The site intercepts all international communications entering the Eastern United States. The Naval Information Operations Command is in charge of the operation.

It started in 1960 with a radio telescope that was to intercept Soviet radar and radio signals by reflecting the signals from the moon. The project got halted and began again in 1962 as a radio receiving station. Sugar Grove is located in an officially designated National Radio Quiet Zone. It covers 13,000 square miles in West Virginia and Virginia.

The zone was established in 1958 by Congress to facilitate its mission and the mission of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory located about 30 miles away. There is a small community called Sugar Grove near the site.

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The US-Canada border is the longest border in the world without a military defense!

The border between the US and Canada began with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The treaty also ended the war between Great Britain and the separating colonies that later formed the United States. The border that was established, called the 45th parallel, began between the Lower Canada and New York State. The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River became the boundary between Upper Canada and the United States.

The international boundary is commonly known as the world’s longest undefended border. It is true, but only in the sense of military defense, because civilian law enforcement is present. The lack of security on the US-Canada border is in stark contrast to the US-Mexico border, which is a third of the length as the US-Canada border.

 As of December 2010, Canada and the United States are negotiating an agreement titled "Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Competitiveness" which would give the U.S. more influence over Canada's border security and immigration controls, and more information would be shared by Canada with the U.S.

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