Page 12 - Best of the Month

Google is helping track animal poachers in Africa!

Google is slowly integrating themselves into every opportunity involving technology, which is an excellent business move in this day and age. The $5 Million donation was a part of Google's Global Giving Awards to help develop a software that uses UAV drones to scan areas in Africa and Asia notorious for poaching.

Poaching has become such an issue in the world that it's estimated that between $7 to $10 billion worth of poached goods are sold on the international market every year. The World Wildlife Fund recognized this problem, and started the program in 2012, with the help of Nepal.

With the help of Google's money, the project has expanded to having unmanned drones scan a region for any sort of large groups of life forms. The drone will then send an alarm to people monitoring the drones cameras, and inspect the situation to see if local authorities need to be contacted!

Want to see the first 10 minutes of the drones footage? Click the source!

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America spends $34mil a year of taxpayer money to broadcast TV and radio to Cuba from Miami, FL.

Over the past two decades, the U.S. Government has spent some $500 million to beam news and commentary with an anti-Castro bent into Cuba. But the programming hasn't exactly been a ratings success. The Cuban government controls all media on the island and views the broadcasts as enemy propaganda, so it jams the signals.

The Miami-based stations, Radio and TV Marti, have spent still more money trying to overcome this by transmitting from moving airplanes, but the broadcasts reach less than 1 percent of Cuba’s 11 million residents, according to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Meanwhile, hours and hours of subversive American programming fill Cuba’s airwaves each day, attracting millions of viewers on the island with shows like “Desperate Housewives,” “Friends” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”

How do they get there? They’re broadcast by Cuba’s own communist government. With Radio and TV Marti and it's $34-million annual budget facing growing skepticism in Congress, the Miami stations’ defenders insist they’re helping to break the Cuban government’s monopoly on information. But while Cuba’s programming is politically biased and often tedious, it’s hardly a drab, droning monotony of pro-Castro propaganda.

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The 1st woman to break the sound barrier was American. She borrowed a Canadian plane because the US wouldn't lend her one!

Jacqueline Cochran was considered one of the most gifted racing pilots of her generation. She helped form the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps and Women Airforce Service Pilots. In 1952, when she was 47 years old, she decided she wanted to challenge the current speed record held by a woman.

However, she tried to borrow a F-86 from the U.S. Air Force, they would not let her. So she went to the Canadians. The Canadian Minister of Defense arranged for her to borrow a Sabre 3. Canadair also sent a 16-person team to California to help with the attempt.

On May 18, 1943 Cochran set a new 100 km. Speed record at 1,050.15 km/hr. During her time flying in California, she exceeded 1270 km/hr and became the first woman to break the sound barrier.

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Mexican Drug cartels have their own private cell phone network!

In 2011, the Mexican military broke up several secret telecommunications networks that were built and controlled by drug cartels so they could coordinate drug shipments, monitor their rivals and orchestrate attacks on the security forces. A network that was dismantled just last week provided cartel members with cellphone and radio communications across four northeastern states.

The network had coverage along almost 500 miles of the Texas border and extended nearly another 500 miles into Mexico's interior. Soldiers seized 167 antennas, more than 150 repeaters and thousands of cellphones and radios that operated on the system. Some of the remote antennas and relay stations were powered with solar panels. The system allowed organized criminals to communicate throughout all of northeast Mexico. It is thought to be from the Zetas cartel.

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The first Native to make contact with the pilgrims spoke to them in English!

The pilgrims had been studying for a few months, some of which were stationed at a settlement known as Plymouth. The pilgrims were under the belief that the Native Americans, or rather 'Indians' as they were so wrongly named for so many years, were a savage tribe - because they assumed that they were unintelligent people because of their culture.

Well, Samoset, the first Native American to make contact with the pilgrims shocked them entirely by speaking in English! It was broken English, albeit, but he was able to communicate with the pilgrims from what he learned listening to the fishermen in a near by region. He knew people by their names, how to ask for food, and he later went on to describe the land to the pilgrims!

This detailed description of the land would not only include landmarks, but where Native Settlements were, and how many people were staying in that Settlement!

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