Page 11 - Best of the Month

The Imperial Walkers from Star Wars were inspired by the largest land mammal ever discovered!

Paraceratherium is an extinct giant, hornless rhinoceros-like mammal. It lived in Eurasia and Asia during the Oligocene epoch. Its remains were first discovered in Pakistan in 1910 by an English paleontologist.

It is considered the largest land mammal known with an average mass of 12 tons. The largest individual known was 16 feet tall at the shoulders and 26.2 feet in length and weighted 18 tons. Despite their large size, Paraceratheriums were herbivores that ate leaves.

According to the movie’s special effects creator, Phil Tippett, Paraceratherium was the inspiration for the AT-AT walkers in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

(Source)

There is only one known death caused by a falling elevator.

While it is a popular subject in folklore and entertainment, elevators are actually pretty safe overall. The only known death caused by a falling elevator happened in Thailand in 2012.

A lift at a Home Furniture Class store started dropping from the fourth floor because a sling chain snapped. There were 3 people in the elevator. One was pregnant and miscarried as a result of it. One person died and the other two suffered critical injuries.

Despite this incident, cable-borne elevators are extremely safe. It's estimated that only 1 in 12 million elevator rides result in an anomaly, and the vast majority of them are minor things like the doors failing to open.

(Source)

90% of Americans live within 15 minutes of a Wal-Mart!

Founded by Sam Walton in 1962, Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world. In fact, it is the third largest public corporation and the largest private employer in the world. At the same time, Wal-Mart is also still a family business—the Walton family owns a 48% stake in it. It offers almost anything that you could want at discounted prices. While their practices have been both commended and criticized, the fact remains that they are supremely popular.

This popularity may account for just how many Wal-Marts there are in America. There are 4,253 stores in the U.S, and they employ over 2 million people. They also serve 100 million customers a week. And get this, 90% of Americans live within 15 minutes of a Wal-Mart. Convenient or scary?

(Source)

Despite their savage reputation, the Vikings were huge fans of poetry!

When you think of the word 'poetry', you probably don't think of a Viking - someone who is typically pictured with a long beard, helmet with horns on it, and looks like he could tear you in half with his bare hands. Well, a discovery by historians is going to change Vikings from looking like savage plunderers, to violent men who also write poetry.

Poetry was such a crucial part of the Viking way of life, that it is said that in order to earn a name for yourself as a Viking, you must be able to write good poetry. Although, some of the Viking poets didn't exactly have the best names - such as Kormak Ogmundarson.

Kormak, along with his Viking comrades, have now been credited with creating romantic poetry, something that was previously credited to medieval civilizations around 200 years later.

The Vikings believed poetry was a gift directly from Odin, but what did Viking poetry look like? Click the source to find out!

(Source)

A penguin fell in a love affair with its zookeeper!

Sandy, an African penguin, was transferred from a zoo in Nuremberg to the Allwetterzoo Münster when it was 1 year old. Instead of integrating into the penguin population, she actually fell in love with her zookeeper.

The penguin would do things like sit on the zookeeper's boot and ask to be pet, jump to the front of the line of the daily penguin march and completely ignore the 80+ other penguins in the zoo.

While this is weird penguin behavior, this was good for the zoo. Penguins don't usually let humans pet them, but Sandy did. This let the zoo have Sandy visit schools, handicapped kids, and retirement homes.

Sadly this story has an ending worse than that Jennifer Aniston / Vince Vaughn movie. The zookeeper was sick for 6 weeks and had to work from home. Penguins go back on a partner hunt if their partner is gone for a few weeks. When the zookeeper came back, Sandy had moved on and had chosen a younger, prettier penguin to be her mate. A 10 year romance dead, just like that.

(Source)