“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to
possibilities; Truth isn’t.”—Mark Twain
***
Last May, I was tidying up my room in preparation for my departure to the United States the following month. While sorting through items to discard and keep, I stumbled upon an old edition of Discovery Channel Magazine, which at that time was published by the same company that published Reader’s Digest.
If my memory serves me correctly, it was sent to me by one of the editors who was then located in Singapore. I am uncertain whether the publication is still in circulation, but it certainly piqued my interest. I paused my cleaning for a moment and began to browse through the pages of the magazine. Before I knew it, I was completely engrossed in reading.
Unexpectedly, the issue proved to be quite educational, immensely entertaining, and rich in facts. For example, I discovered – through my reading – that a significant Roman statue has been unearthed by a group of archaeologists excavating at the ancient hilltop settlement of Sagalassos, located high in the western Toros mountains of southern Turkey.
If you are a film enthusiast and a devoted fan of Harry Potter, you might need to wait a bit longer to experience that “cloak of invisibility.” Nevertheless, a cloak of silence is currently being developed.
A team from Spain’s Polytechnic University of Valencia has devised a design for an “acoustic cloak” composed of 200 layers of two alternating “metamaterials,” which are made up of lattices of cylindrical rods.
If you have seen the 2008 American adventure film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crustal Skull (released in 2008), you might be wondering whether crystal skulls are indeed for real. Actually, crystal skulls do exist and can be found in several of the world’s great museums.
Some legends have grown up around them – one says a dozen of skulls will have to be assembled on December 21, 2012, in order to prevent a doomsday predicted in Mayan texts.
Our saliva does not always get the respect it rightly deserves. A study conducted by French researchers in 2006 showed that the humble fluid contains a pain killer called opiorphin which is reportedly six times more potent than morphine.
So, expect a drug coming from saliva in the years to come.
My brother Arman is a Discovery Channel fanatic before. One of the programs he usually watches is the MythBusters. The said issue also featured three questions. One inquiry that caught our attention is this: “Could an untrained airline passenger be talked into making a safe landing?”
The answer goes this way: “We’ve all seen movies where the pilot and co-pilot are dead or unconscious and a heroic passenger lands the plane safely under instruction from air-traffic control.
“This has never happened in real life and even if such a situation arose the passenger would only have to touch a few knobs and buttons as today’s autopilots can land a plane safely,” it continued.
Looking for street cool on two wheels? Look no further than the Honda DN-01. Described by its manufacturer as “a fusion of superbike performance, relaxed cruiser riding, and scooter ease of use,” it not only looks fantastic but is an engineer’s dream, too.
Its large 15-liter tank can allow you to travel 100 kilometers per 5 liters or 300 kilometers if filled-up.
The bike has a chip in the ignition key and a matching chip in the engine’s electronic control unit to “talk” with each other at start up to ensure the rightful owner is about to ride off.
It has a five-page article on pencil. From the said article, I learned that American inventor Thomas Edison had his pencils specially made by Eagle Pencil to be three inches long, fatter than ordinary pencils and filled with very soft lead. Famous author John Steinbeck wrote obsessively in pencil, sometimes going through 60 in one day.
Unknown to many, pencils are as valuable as diamonds. “Pencil graphite is composed of the same substance as diamonds – carbon,” explained Michael Franco, who wrote the article. “In graphite, the atoms are arranged in sheet-like layers, with weak attraction between the sheets.
“Because these layers are not tightly bonded, the graphite is easily manipulated, which allows the graphite in a pencil to roll onto paper easily.”
What about the diamonds? Franco answered: “Carbon atoms in diamonds are arranged in very strong three-dimensional bonds, making diamonds the hardest substance on earth.”
That is why one of the titles of a James Bond flick is Diamonds Are Forever.
There is also an eight-page article on bats. I wonder why Batman has chosen this agile animal which is often associated with horror movies. “Shy, gentle, nocturnal animals, the majority of bats aren’t much bigger than a mouse, covered with soft, silky fur and equipped with delicate membranous wings that allow their owners to perform spectacular aerobatics in search of food,” wrote author Rachel Sullivan.
American president John Adams stated, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
