When they banned nuclear power, New Zealand refused to let US warships dock in their waters

In 1985, tension developed between New Zealand and the US. The US had been declared a nuclear power while New Zealand was anti-nuclear. New Zealand’s prime minister David Lange banned nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships from docking in New Zealand ports and even entering New Zealand waters.

The United States refused to confirm or deny whether their ships contained nuclear weapons so this essentially banned all their ships from New Zealand waters. In response, the US suspended it's treaty obligations to New Zealand until they would allow US Naval ships to enter their waters. The US described New Zealand as “a friend, but not an ally.”

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Fahrenheit 451 got its name after a fire station burned a book and told the author about it!

Some of you might know that “Fahrenheit 451” is a science fiction novel, a disturbing story of a future civilization in which firemen burn books! Sadly no one was allowed to enjoy reading a nice book. Books were meant to be burned, along with the houses they were found in.

Ray Bradbury originally titled Fahrenheit 451 as 'The Fireman', but he and the editors found the name so boring that they decided to call the physics and chemistry departments at several universities, but no one could pinpoint this temperature.

Then, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it first, he called the local fire station, and asked what temperature book paper burnt at. The firemen put Bradbury on hold, burnt a book, and reported that the temp it burnt at was Fahrenheit 451.

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In 2004, Georgia fired its entire traffic police force!

In 2004, a year after Georgia's "Rose Revolution," the new government decided to fight corruption in an unusual way. They fired the country's entire traffic police force of nearly 18,000 officers. Contrary to what you would think, traffic actually improved.

The "Rose Revolution" and the subsequent mass lay off of the traffic police force, was in response to the country's high corruption levels. The population took to the streets in 2003 in order to protest the corruption that had been growing in Georgia since it gained it's independence in 1991. They demanded the resignation of current leader Eduard Shevardnadze. He was later replaced with new leadership.

After they were fired, the traffic police force also took to the streets to protest. However, they stopped after just two hours when they failed to gain the support of the public. Along with this police overhaul, the new government instituted many reforms. Recently, a Transparency International survey about the number of people who had paid bribes put Georgia at 3 percent, which is better than the United States.

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A kid hacked his grades and changed them to be salutatorian!

In a Nevada high school, high school Senior Tyler Coyner decided that he would change his grades to be Salutatorian of his school! Supposedly, Coyner was also charging other students to change their grades as well, but it was never made clear whether he actually changed grades other than his own. 

Coyner was a good student as it was, so he didn’t have to change many grades to become salutatorian. He was just barely behind the actual salutatorian, and just needed to change a B+ to an A- to get the award. 

Administrators didn’t even notice because the change in his grades was so small. He ended up giving the speech as salutatorian, and spoke about how he learned what it meant to be a good student at his school. 

In another school, Palos Verdes High School, three kids were running a grade-changing business. The three students were Juniors and charged other students around $300 to change their grades. In order to hack the computers, they installed keystroke loggers on teacher computers to learn their teachers’ usernames and passwords. 

They used this information to help many other students cheat and make a huge profit!

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When sea water freezes into sea ice, it releases its salt and becomes a

When salt-rich water leaks out of sea ice, it sinks into the sea and can occasionally create an eerie finger of ice called a brinicle. New research explains how these strange fingers of ice form and how the salty water within sea ice could have been a prime environment in which life may have evolved.

These ice stalactites are created under sea ice when cold, saline water is introduced to an area of ocean water.At the time of its creation, a brinicle resembles a pipe of ice reaching down from the underside of a layer of sea ice.

As the sea water freezes, it pushes out impurities, including salt. This makes the water surrounding the pipe more saline, and more dense, so it starts to sink. As the dense water flows down, some of it freezes and creates the finger-like shape that's characteristic of the brinicle.

At first, a brinicle is very fragile; its walls are thin and it is largely the constant flow of colder brine that sustains its growth and hinders its melt that would be caused by the contact with the less cold surrounding water. Check out the source for an awesome video of this process!

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