News around the world

Man discovers mammoth tusk

The odds of discovering one mammoth tusk is anyway pretty low, but the odds of two people in one family finding a mammoth tusk is almost unbelievable.Almost… Andrew Harrelson recently found a 170-pound wooly mammoth tusk in the same Alaska river where his mother found one 22 years earlier!

Andrew was fishing for salmon with his fiancee and two children but was having little luck.

He decided to hunt for mammoth tusks instead. When they arrived at the same area of the river where his mother found a tusk in 1992, Andrew almost immediately discovered the base of a tusk that was covered by a stump.

He couldn’t get it out himself, so he drove his family back to White Mountain and returned with a relative. Together they got the tusk loose. When his mother found a tusk in 1992, then-three-year-old Andrew wasn’t able to identify it as quickly.Alaskan paleontologist Dale Guthrie said the last glacial period on Alaska was around 18,000 years ago and mainland mammoths died nearly 12,000 years ago. But they could be much, much older than that.

“The [White Mountain] tusks could be that young or they could be when the ancient elephants first arrived here, which is 300,000 to 400,000 years ago,” said Guthrie. “You’d have to radio carbon date to see its age.”

-Internet

Hello kitty goes to space

Hello Kitty is saying hello from outer space onboard Japan’s Hodoyoshi-3 satellite! The cute character, who is celebrating her 40th birthday this year, put on her space helmet and set off on a government-funded mission to space to promote Japan’s high-tech industry and help jump start its economy.

The satellite was developed by Japanese researchers as part of a $40 million education and science ministry program. The program’s goal is to get more private companies interested in working with satellites.. “Through this project we can make those people interested and stimulate their scientific curiosity. We can move their hearts,” said Toshiki Tanaka, researcher in charge of the project at the University of Tokyo’s Nano-Satellite Center.

Researchers have been having a tough time manoeuvring the satellite just right to point at Earth when taking photos of Hello Kitty looking out the window. Sanrio, the licenser of Hello Kitty, asked fans to send 180-character messages for Hello Kitty to deliver from space as a part of their “Let’s Send Message from Space” campaign. In the first day Sanrio received 100 submissions!

-Internet

Automated ‘thanking’ machine showers gifts

Canadians companies sure seem to know how to appreciate customers. First there was WestJet Airlines that dished out Christmas presents and now, The Toronto-Dominion Bank which recently transformed the normally staid Automated Teller Machines into Automated Thanking Machines, that showered customers with surprise gifts.

The fun event took place on July 25th, when four branches located in Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary, set up the special ‘Automated Thanking Machines'. As the day progressed, 30,000 lucky customers were rewarded with an extra $20. But for a select few regular clients, the bank had an even bigger surprise in store.

When any of those special customers approached, the ATM came to life, welcoming them by name. Then it dispensed a well-thought out gift along with a ‘thank you’ note. Dorothy, a long-time customer of the bank received plane tickets to Trinidad so that she could be with her daughter, who is undergoing treatment for cancer.

Christine, a mother of two, not only received two $1,000 Registered Education Savings Plans for her children, but also, a trip to Disneyland! An elderly woman received a vase with flowers, while Michael, an avid baseball fan was thanked with a glove, a Toronto Blue Jays hat, a customised jersey and best of all, an invitation to throw first pitch at a Toronto baseball game!

As the video description aptly puts it - ‘A thank you can change someone's day’ - It sure did for the recipients and continues to do so, for the hundreds of thousands that view the video each day, and experience the sheer joy on a customer's faces!

-Internet