Page 7 - Best of the Week

There's a Lightning storm in Venezuela that's been going on since at least the 16th century!

Relámpago del Catatumbo (Catatumbo Lightning) is an atmospheric phenomenon that occurs where the Catatumbo River meets the Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela.

How do they happen? The winds blowing accross the Maracaibo lake and other swampy plains around the area meet with the Andes mountain ridges. These winds carry a lot of heat and moisture, which are perfect for creating electric charges. The result? Lightning for 280 times an hour, 10 hours a day for 160 nights a year!

It is believed that the phenomenon has been going around since at least the 16th century (and most likely, even more than that). The first time this storm was reported in writing was an epic poem called "la Dragontea," by Lope de Vega in 1597, which told of the defeat of Sir Francis Drake at this site. Drake tried to attack the city of Maracaibo, but the lightning gave away his position and the city was able to respond in time.

All the electric activity makes the Catatumbo Lightning the largest single generator of Ozone in the planet. The lightning is visible up to 400 km away! Because of this, it's also called as the Maracaibo Beacon.

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The world's (un)luckiest man cheated death 7 times and then won the $1 million lottery!

Frane Selak, a Croatian music teacher, began his unlucky streak in 1962 on a train going from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik. The train unexplainably jumped the tracks and fell into an icy river killing 17 passengers.

Selak managed to swim to shore suffering from hypothermia and a broken arm. A year later while on an airplane, it's door flew off and Selak was sucked out of the airplane. The plane crashed and he woke up in a hospital. He'd been found in a haystack.

Then in 1966, Selak was on a bus that went off the road and into a river. Four people were killed, but he suffered minor injuries.

In 1970, his car caught on fire and he stopped it and got out just before the whole car blew up. In 1973, Selak was driving another car when a faulty fuel line sprayed gas all over the engine and flames blew through his air vents. His only injury was the loss of most of his hair.

In '95 he was hit by a bus, but on sustained minor injuries. Finally in 1996 he was driving on a mountain road when he went around a bend and saw a truck coming right at him. He ran is car through a guardrail and jumped out to watch his car blow up 300 feet below him.

In 2003, Selak bought a lottery ticket for the first time in 40 years at the age of 74. He ended up winning $1 million.

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The Automaton from the movie Hugo was real and actually worked!

If you saw the movie Hugo, you know that one of the movie's best and most moving scenes is when Hugo finally manages to turn on the mysterious automaton he found in his dad's apartment.

You might've thought that the machine was all CGI, or at least parts of it were. However, it was an actual working machine that was able to draw in real time. It was created by Dick George Creatives and they made a video talking about how the Automaton was made. Check it out:

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The Devil's Kettle waterfall empties into a sinkhole. Nobody knows where that sinkhole leads to!

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes. It's also home to some other bodies of water, some of them rather odd. One such odd formation is the Devil's Kettle, which stems off of the Brule River.

About 1.5 miles from the river's mouth, it split into two over a mass of rock. The eastern part flows over a 50 foot waterfall and continues on. The western flow falls 10 feet into a hole and then disappears into the ground. The source of this has yet to be found.

Some believe the water rejoins the river later or has a separate outlet to Lake Superior, but this has not been confirmed. Researchers have tried to locate the outlet by putting colored dyes and ping pong balls into the Devil's Kettle but to no avail. There is even a legend that a car disappeared into the sink hole but this is highly unlikely.

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One of the strongest predictor of a rise in obesity in the US is the decline in cigarette smoking!

Obesity is a national problem in the US. Some estimates say 30% of Americans are currently obese (defined by having a body mass index of 30 or more). This is a huge increase from just 25 years ago. So what is causing this increase? People gain weight by consuming more calories than they burn--what is influencing them to do this? Fast food? An increasingly sedentary lifestyle?

The National Bureau of Economic Research studied a number of socio-economic factors related to weight gain to see which had the most effect. Some of the factors they considered were food prices, employment, physical activity at work, urbanization, cigarette smoking, and prevalence of restaurants.

Surprisingly, they found that cigarette smoking had the largest effect. A decline in cigarette smoking, which can hinder weight gain, accounts for about 2% of the increase in obesity.

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