Record? 2,551 foundation stones laid in eight hours

If the organisers of the Guinness World Records come to know about this feat it would be inscribed in stone in the annual records book.

Gopal Bhargava

It happened in India’s Madhya Pradesh and performed by Social Justice and Rural Development Minister Gopal Bhargava.He created a record by laying foundation for 2,551 projects in eight hours.

You might wonder whether he visited all those places for this unbelievable exercise.

The minister’s string of rituals took place in his stronghold Rehli, where he hired a small stadium for his foundation-laying spree. In total, 2,551 stones and plaques were collected and piled upon a podium.

He spent just five minutes each, anointing every stone with vermillion and flowers amid a cloud of incense and chanting of mantras by 12 hired priests.

The minister dedicated 2,551 projects worth 3.25 billion rupees for the welfare of Madhya Pradesh.

Villagers from 90 gram panchayats thronged the venue to attend the ceremony, which he termed as the samoohik shila poojan karyakram(community foundation stone laying program). His effort was hailed by his supporters as an innovative way to cut cost and save time.

The organisers called the name of each village and volunteers stacked the plaques of every project on a platform.

The ritual was not over. The volunteers religiously transported the stones and installed at their chosen sites.

He did a similar feat five years ago in Bhainswadi, a hamlet in his constituency.

When his political rivals vandalised 1,100 foundation stones that had the minister’s name inscribed, Bhargava rushed there and performed a re-installation ceremony with the help of priests.

Wow! A pink grasshopper!

A pink Grasshopper? You must be kidding?

The vivid pink insect was spotted by an eight-year-old on a farm in Wiltshire

No its true. If so you can’t call him a grasshopper.
Why?

Then the grass too should be pink in colour? Isn’t it?

The dialogue goes on but the fact remains that a pink coloured grasshopper has been found on a farm in Wiltshire. UK.

This “very unusual” vivid pink insect was spotted by eight-year-old Bailey Smith at Ratfyn Farm in Amesbury. The insect has been identified as a young female meadow grasshopper by the Wiltshire and Swindon Biological Records Centre (WSBRC).

Vicky James, from the WSRBC, said although it was not a rare species, “only rarely are vivid pink female nymphs seen”.

Bailey Smith, who keeps his pony at Ratfyn managed to trap the inch-long insect to show his mother, Vanessa.

“I thought he was pulling my leg,” she said.

“But he said ‘it's really pink’ and it was, it was cerise pink - so we took a picture of it and sent it to the WSBRC.” According to the WSBRC, common grasshoppers are usually green in colour, however, “brown and purplish forms also occur”.

“But it is a very unusual to be this pink colour and only rarely are vivid pink female nymphs seen,” said Ms James.

Snowflake - the only known albino gorilla in the world

Snowflake was the only albino western lowland gorilla known to man.

Snowflake the gorilla gained notoriety for being the only known albino of his species. Now the late ape is making headlines again over the recent post-mortem discovery that he was inbred.

Snowflake was the conjunction of two very rare events.

Snowflake, a western lowland gorilla, was born in the wild in Equatorial Guinea (map). In 1966 he was taken to the Barcelona Zoo in Barcelona, Spain, where he lived until his death from skin cancer in 2003. Since then, scientists at Barcelona's Institut de Biologia Evolutiva at the University of Pompeu Fabra have been studying Snowflake's frozen blood and using it to sequence his genome. In a new study, they announced a twofold discovery about Snowflake's genes that may help scientists understand how he became the only known albino of his species.

An animal that does not produce melanin, resulting in little or no color in the skin, hair, and eyes, is considered an albino.

First, according to the study leader Tomas Marques-Bonet the scientists pinpointed the exact genetic cause of Snowflake's albinism - a gene known as SCL45A2, which had previously been reported in albino mice, horses, and chickens.

Second, and possibly more important, the scientists found that Snowflake was the result of inbreeding - an unusual practice for his species - which was likely the reason for the gorilla's unique coloration, according to the study. The albino mutation is recessive, Marques-Bonet explained, meaning it becomes visible only if both parents pass the mutation on to a child. One of Snowflake's ancestors was likely the original carrier.Because his parents were related - an uncle and a niece by the researchers’ guess - their DNA contained some of the same genes, one of which happened to be the rare albinism mutation.

Both the mutant gene and the inbreeding are rare occurrences for western lowland gorillas, and the combination that produced Snowflake isn't likely to happen again any time soon.

“This explains why only one albino western lowland gorilla has ever been found,” Marques-Bonet said.