Page 62 - Best of the Month

The Ceremony of the Keys in London has been going on uninterrupted since the 14th century!

At the Tower of London, the Ceremony of the Keys has been going on every night in some form or another since the 14th century. At exactly 9:53pm, the Chief Yeoman Warder meets the military escort and they secure the main gates of the tower.

When they return down Water Lane, the party is halted by the sentry and is challenged to identify themselves. After, they go to the Broadwalk steps where they make a salute to the Queen and then the Warder takes the keys for safe keeping.

The only notable hiccup in this ceremony since the 14th century was one time during World War II. The bombings over London delayed the ceremony. The Officer of the Guard sent a letter to King George apologizing for the delay. The king replied that he should not be punished because the delay was a result of enemy action.

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Heath Ledger kept a diary as the Joker where he wrote things that the Joker would find funny, like AIDS and blind babies.

Writer Grant Morrison read a diary that Heath Ledger had written while he prepared to play the Joker on The Dark Knight. Turns out that Morrison's writings had a lot of influence on the way that Ledger portrayed the Joker.

Morrison had written a list of things that the Joker found funny on a comic called The Clown at Midnight. It was prose, as opposed to the typical comic book format, so it wasn't that widely read. Except for Heath Ledger.

Morrison commented on how the diary had a list of things that would make the Joker laugh: Blind babies, AIDS, seriously injured doctors, geniuses with brain damage, landmines, brunch and sombreros. That list was almost word for word what Morrison had put down on page in The Clown at Midnight.

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There's a laser procedure that turns brown eyes blue!

A doctor in Laguna Beach has developed a new laser technique that allows people with brown eyes to turn them permanently blue. How is this possible? Brown eyes are actually blue underneath, but there are cells on top of the blue pigmentation that turn them darker.

The doctor says that after the 20-second procedure, the brown pigments start to fade and your eyes should be blue from then on out. He's been working on the technology for about 10 years and he estimates that it will be available for the public within a few years and cost about $5000.

Learn more at the source

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Mannequins are being equipped with cameras to study shopping habits!

Sounds like something out of Minority Report or 1984, but it's true. An Italian company called Almax SpA is selling a new type of mannequin called the EyeSee. It costs about $5000.

The EyeSee looks ordinary on the outside. However, inside one of it's eyes, there is a camera and software that can detect your age, gender and race. The data is being used to change store displays and sales.

The EyeSee is making retailers change their strategies. For example, using data from the EyeSee, a store realized that men who shopped in the first two days of a sale spent more than women. As a result, they've changed their displays to better suit men in the first days of a sale.

What do you think? Clever marketing idea or creepy invasion of privacy? Let us know in the comments.

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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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