Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comedic actor and film director. Chaplin became one of the most famous actors as well as a notable filmmaker, composer and musician in the early to mid Classical Hollywood era of American cinema.
Chaplin acted in, directed, scripted, produced and eventually scored his own films as one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer almost until his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, Chaplin co-founded United Artists in 1919.
In a review of the book Chaplin: A Life (2008), Martin Sieff writes: "Chaplin was not just 'big', he was gigantic. In 1915, he burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through World War I. Over the next 25 years, through the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler, he stayed on the job. He was bigger than anybody. It is doubtful any individual has ever given more entertainment pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889, in East Street, Walworth, London, England. His parents were both entertainers in the music hall tradition; his father was a vocalist and an actor and his mother, a singer and an actress. They separated before Charlie was three. He learned singing from his parents. The 1891 census shows that his mother, the actress Hannah Hill, lived with Charlie and his older half-brother Sydney on Barlow Street, Walworth. As a child, Charlie also lived with his mother in various addresses in and around Kennington Road in Lambeth, including 3 Pownall Terrace, Chester Street and 39 Methley Street. His maternal grandmother was half-Gypsy, a fact of which he was extremely proud,[3] but was also described as "the skeleton in our family cupboard".[4] Chaplin's father, Charles Chaplin Sr., was an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and his half-brother briefly lived with their father and his mistress, Louise, at 287 Kennington Road where a plaque now commemorates the fact. The half-brothers lived there while their mentally ill mother resided at Cane Hill Asylum at Coulsdon. Chaplin's father's mistress sent the boy to Archbishop Temples Boys School. His father died of alcoholism when Charlie was twelve in 1901. As of the 1901 Census, Charles resided at 94 Ferndale Road, Lambeth, with The Eight Lancashire Lads, led by John William Jackson (the 17 year old son of one of the founders).
A larynx condition ended the singing career of Chaplin's mother. Hannah's first crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot. The theatre was mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers. Hannah was badly injured by the objects the audience threw at her and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager. Meanwhile, the five-year old Chaplin went on stage alone and sang a well-known tune at that time, "Jack Jones".

After Chaplin's mother (who went by the stage name Lilly Harley) was again admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum, her son was left in the workhouse at Lambeth in south London, moving after several weeks to the Central London District School for paupers in Hanwell. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship in order to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. Chaplin's early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth.
Chaplin's mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after having been brought to the U.S. by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden, was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.

Galaxies Across Space and Time

Galaxies Across Space and Time - 2:51 An Award Winning IMAX® Super Short from the home of the Hubble Space Telescope

In Memory of the Victims of September 11, 2001

Elephants Life cycle_Nature Life

Elephants live in small family groups led by old females (cows). Where food is plentiful, the groups join together. Most males (bulls) live in bachelor herds apart from the cows. Males and females both possess two glands that open between the eye and ear. Elephants of all ages and sexes secrete a fluid called temporin out of this orifice. Males, however, enter a “musth period,” during which they secrete a fluid differing in viscosity from the fluid secreted when they are not in musth. Serum testosterone during musth is higher than in a nonmusth elephant, and the animal’s behaviour is erratic; they are uncontrollable (musth is Hindi for “intoxicated”), sometimes even by their own handlers (mahouts). Musth is the time for establishing reproductive hierarchy, which can differ from the usual social hierarchy in that a male in musth outranks nonmusth males. In the wild, males are usually at their prime physical state during musth and ordinarily do most of the breeding.

Elephants are able to assess the reproductive status of one another by using their keen sense of smell. Inside the skull, elephants possess from seven to nine nasal turbinals with specialized sensitive tissues for olfaction. (Humans have only three turbinals; dogs have five.) When a female is in estrus, or when a male is in musth, an elephant apparently can detect airborne hormones. Once “collected,” the information is then passed to the Jacobson’s organ, located on the roof of the mouth. This organ conveys the molecules to the brain for analysis. Hormones are also sniffed directly from urine and feces.
Gestation is the longest of any mammal (18–22 months). The newborn elephant is about a metre (3.3 feet) tall and weighs about 100 kg (220 pounds). It suckles by using the mouth, not the trunk, at mammary glands located in the chest region. Weaning is a long process and sometimes continues until the mother can no longer tolerate the pokes of her offspring’s emerging tusks. After weaning, many hours of each day are spent eating. An adult elephant consumes about 100 kg of food and 100 litres (26 gallons) of water per day; these amounts can double for a hungry and thirsty individual. Such consumption makes elephants an important ecological factor; they substantially affect and even alter the ecosystems they live in.
Elephants migrate seasonally according to the availability of food and water. Memory plays an important role during this time, as they remember locations of water supplies along migration routes. Intelligence has also been observed in conjunction with memory. One elephant, using its tusks and trunk, stripped bark from a nearby tree and chewed it until it made a large ball, then plugged a waterhole it had previously dug and covered the plug with sand. Subsequently, the elephant was seen to uncover the sand, unplug the hole, and drink—a behaviour that could be interpreted as tool-making.
Although unable to jump or gallop, elephants can reach a top speed of 40 km (25 miles) per hour. Their feet are well adapted to carrying their great weight. The heel is partially elevated, and below it is a thick fatty, fibrous wedge of tissue protected by thick skin. It is not easy for elephants to lie down and get up; they sleep lying down for three to four hours during the night. While standing, elephants doze for short periods but do not sleep deeply. Elephants can live to 80 years of age or more in captivity but live to only about 60 in the wild. Evidence does not substantiate the existence of so-called “elephant graveyards,” where elephants supposedly gather to die.

Python-Nature Life

Python , name for nonvenomous constrictor snakes of the boa family, found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, Australia, and the S Pacific islands. Pythons climb and swim expertly. They kill the birds and mammals on which they feed by squeezing them in their coils. Unlike boas, pythons are egg layers. The female coils her body over the eggs for the six to eight week incubation period. The reticulated, or royal, python, Python reticulatus, of SE Asia, Indonesia, and the Philippines is one of the largest snakes in the world and may reach a length of 30 ft (9 m) or more. It is often found in towns as well as in the forest. Pythons are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Reptilia, order Squamata, family Boidae.

Bomb blast effects (1959)-True Video

Footage from an atomic bomb test

US Airways Flight 1549 (an Airbus A320)

On 15 January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 (an Airbus A320) successfully ditched into the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey, after reports of multiple bird strikes. The aircraft came down on the Hudson with no engine power and slightly tail down (to prevent immediate sinking by the nose "plowing in"). All of the 155 passengers and crew aboard escaped and were rescued by passenger ferries and day-cruise boats, in spite of freezing temperatures (the ditching occurred near the Circle Line and New York Waterway piers in midtown Manhattan). The survival rate was 100%.


The captain was Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, 57, a former fighter pilot who had been an airline pilot since leaving the US Air Force in 1980. He is also a safety expert and a glider pilot. Startlingly successful, the set down brought to the consciousness of all that it is indeed possible for passengers of such an air incident to be brought from open exits and from the inflated ramps onto the wings of a floating plane and there to stand waiting to be brought down to boats for evacuation to the land. This supports the testimony of fishermen off the shores of Moneron Island, as reported to the Israeli Research Centre for Prisons, Psychprisons, and Forced Labor Concentration Camps of the USSR, who had witnessed just such a happening for KAL 007 - people standing on the wings of the floating jumbo jet, some with some sort of hand luggage, being evacuated into waiting boats.

KAL 007 had also been piloted by an expert. A KAL pilot since 1972, a former fighter pilot, just as Capt Sullenberger, with 10,600 hours of flight time with 6,618 hours on the Boeing 747, Captain Chun Byung-in had been nominated as the President of Korea's personal pilot. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Board member Kitty Higgins, the principal spokesperson for the on-scene Flight 1549 investigation, said at a press conference the day after the accident that it "has to go down [as] the most successful ditching in aviation history." This statement is not entirely correct. There has been quite a number of successful intentional water landings of passenger planes, some also resulting in a 100% survival rate, and there has never been a case when there have not been survivors of such a water ditching. Here are the details: US Airways Flight 1549, Airbus A320, New York City to Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, 15 January 2009, made a controlled safe water ditching into the Hudson River after losing thrust in both engines due to bird strike at about 3000 feet altitude three minutes into the flight; 155 passengers and crew made an orderly evacuation as a NYC fireboat towed the floating aircraft with passengers standing on the wing, 100% survival rate Tuninter Air, Flt. 1153, August 6, 2005, of the coast of Sicily, 39 occupants, 23 survivors, 59% survival rate Miami Air Lease Convair CV-340, December 4, 2004, Mall lake, Florida, 2 occupants, 2 survivors, 100% survival rate Ethiopian Air Lines 767, November 23, 1996, off the Comoros Islands, 175 occupants, 45 survivors, 26% survival rate Though not a passenger plane, still relevant - Columbian AF C 130 Hercules, October 1982, en route between the Azores and Bermuda stayed afloat for 2 days! ALM DC9, May 2, 1970, the Caribbean, 63 occupants, 40 survivors, 63% survival rate Aeroflot Tupolev 124, October, 1963, Neva river, 52 occupants, 52 survivors, 100% survival rate Flying Tiger's Super H Constellation passenger aircraft with a crew of 8 and 68 U.S. military (paratrooper) passengers. Sept. 28, 1962. Aircraft ditched in the North Atlantic about 500 miles west of Shannon, Ireland, after losing three engines on a flight to Frankfurt, Germany. Forty-five of the passengers and 3 crew were rescued, with 23 passengers and 5 crew members being lost in the storm-swept seas. All passengers successfully evacuated the airplane. Those who were lost succumbed in the rough seas. 100% survival rate for landing and evacuation. Pan Am Flt. 943 Stratocruiser "Sovereign of the Skies", October 16, 1956, in the Pacific between Honolulu and San Francisco, 30 passengers and crew, 30 survivors, 100% survival rate Northwest Orient Airlines Flt. 2, Boeing Stratocruiser, April 2, 1956, ditched in 430 feet Puget Sound, 38 passengers, all survived the ditching but 4 could not recover the freezing waters, 87% survival rate

Burj Al Arab -World's only seven star(*******) hotel

Burj Al Arab offers a restaurant, a bar/lounge, and a swim-up bar. The property provides 24-hour room service. The full-service spa features massage and treatment rooms and beauty services. In addition to an indoor pool and a children's pool, Burj Al Arab provides a private beach, a health club, a spa tub, and a sauna. Business-related amenities include a business center and a technology helpdesk. Meeting facilities include conference rooms, a ballroom, exhibit space, and banquet facilities. This Dubai property provides an airport shuttle (surcharge). Burj Al Arab also offers a marina on site, a fitness facility, and wireless Internet access. The property has a 24-hour front desk. Onsite parking is complimentary.

World Best Creative for Smokers