The Flying Man

A man flying with his jet-pack..a new hobby!

No Alternative to Water !

TINA factor

photo: Himalaya Darpan

Colur Blindness

For a society often seen to reflect a deeply ingrained bias for "fair skin", a Supreme Court ruling sentencing a man to two years in jail for driving his wife to suicide following taunts over her "dark" complexion will serve as both a warning and a mirror to its uglier traits.

The apex court was firm that ridiculing a wife by calling her "black" amounted to severe mental torture.

It rejected the husband's plea that mere remarks about his spouse's complexion could not be taken into consideration as they did not amount to mental torture and that therefore, the conclusion that this drove her to commit suicide was erroneous.

The court said derogatory and contemptuous remarks about a woman's dark complexion, which could be worse than physical torture for a sensitive person, caused enough mental trauma to drive the accused's wife to take the extreme step.

The order from a Bench comprising Justices Altamas Kabir and J M Panchal for the first time marks a new sensitivity towards a form of discrimination that has been so common that it is not even considered as out of the ordinary.

While the court and legislature have acted against caste-based and, lately against gender-based prejudices, the colour handicap had not engaged its attention so far.

In the facts of the case, Syed Fathima, within two months of her marriage to Farook Batcha in August 1999, got so distressed with the constant quarrels in her matrimonial home because of her dark complexion that she finally decided to end her life by pouring kerosene and setting herself on fire.

In her dying declaration, she said that since her complexion was dark, her husband did not like her and there were frequent quarrels. A day after giving the statement, she died in hospital.

A Madurai sessions court as well as Madras High Court found the husband guilty under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (cruelty to women in matrimonial home) and sentenced him to two years imprisonment.

Picture grab: Sivaji-Tamil Movie
News source:Times of India

Burned

I met this boy at the Dentam Bazar-West Sikkim.Is their any blogger out their who can suggest /help towards his facial improvement, as this happened when he was an infant. suppuone@gmail.com

NORTH AND SOUTH

Feb 08, 2008-NEW DELHI: Hot on the heels of the controversial utterances by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray about North Indians, the Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi brewed up another storm on Thursday by stating that it was a speciality of the residents of North India to derive a sense of pride in violating the law and then boasting about it.
Speaking at the launch of a “Traffic Patrol Scheme” of the Delhi Police, Mr. Tejendra Khanna raised many eyebrows with his remarks that came at a time when anti-North Indian statements have already roused enough rabble. “In this region, the situation is such that commonly it is a matter of pride to violate the law. The behaviour pattern in South India is such that the people naturally stay within the limits of the law,” he remarked.
For good measure, Mr. Khanna also quipped, “It is a speciality of North and West India that the people feel a sense of honour and pride in violating the law and boasting that no action has been taken against them”.
The Lieutenant-Governor said he had decided to make efforts to ensure that people here respect the law. “If the people overstep the limits, then the law enforcement agencies should not remain mute spectators and should take effective action,” he emphasised.
For his part, Mr. Khanna later clarified that he had only referred to “the comparatively lower level of autonomous self-compliance of traffic regulations…compared with metropolitan cities in the South which is borne out by relevant statistics”.
“This in turn leads to the need for a more effective police presence and alertness to check violations,” he added. Criticism
Only this past January Mr. Khanna had come under severe criticism over the issue of photo identity cards being made mandatory for all residents of the Capital. Following loud protests by a cross-section of political parties including the Congress and the Delhi Government, he clarified that he had been misunderstood. The matter had stirred a hornet’s nest with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar writing to the Prime Minister urging him to ensure withdrawal of the L-G’s plan as it could have been used to harass people from certain States.
With the latest remarks coming at a time when relations between Mr. Khanna and Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit are far from cosy, the “North India” issue has again generated heat and further affected power equations between the two who had not seen eye to eye with each other over the recent appointment of the State Chief Secretary and the DDA Vice-Chairperson. The issue has also given the Opposition an opportunity to target the Congress in this Delhi Assembly election year.
Already Delhi BJP president Harsh Vardhan has demanded that Mr. Khanna withdraw his statement. And while sharing this sentiment, party secretary Vijay Goel charged that “there is something wrong with the thinking of the Congress at large as last year Ms. Dikshit had made some remarks about people from UP and Bihar in Delhi”.
On the contrary, Delhi Nationalist Congress Party leader Ramvir Singh Bidhuri welcomed Mr. Khanna’s statement saying that there was a need to discipline road users in the Capital.

source: The Hindu

Cyclist’s circumambulation

Cyclist’s circumambulation

Cathy Heffernan

Scotsman goes round the world in record 195 days, six hours
A Scottish man on Friday became the fastest to cycle around the world when he arrived in Paris after nearly seven months on the road. Mark Beaumont, 25, completed the trip in 195 days and six hours — beating the current record of 276 days. (He passed through India in late-2007.)

After months of dodging drivers, sleeping rough and struggling to get enough to eat, he is expected to enter the Guinness Book of Records once the feat is verified.

Carrying 80 kg of gear, including a tent, on a £2,500 road bike, Mr. Beaumont beat the previous record by 81 days. He said the last two days on the road had been hard, but “about 40 km from Paris the adrenaline kicked in and I flew up the last hills.”

His trip took him through 20 countries on a route which included Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. Holland last August took four hours; Germany three days. He endured floods and road rage and was knocked off his bike in Louisiana in the U.S. by a motorist who drove through a red light.

At one point in the U.S., he found himself at a motel that was full of crack addicts, who stole his wallet and BBC camera. Back in the saddle, he cycled through the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida in two days.

He kept a Web diary, allowing fans to follow his journey, and the small crowd that saw him off at the Arc de Triomphe on August 5 last year had grown into a huge one, that included the British Ambassador to France and a media scrum, when he completed the trip. “I could hardly get over the finishing line because so many people turned out,” he remarked.

Mr. Beaumont, a vegetarian, had to consume 6,000 calories a day to sustain energy levels. This meant he sometimes had to eat meat to rack up the count. In the outback in Australia he relied on Mars bars and tins of baked beans in an area where petrol stations and shops only crop up every few hundred miles.

En route to Lahore he came down with food poisoning, and had a stomach like “a tumble drier.” He said the trip could have gone faster if it had not been for the junk food he had had to eat in Australia and the U.S. “There were no healthy options — and it had a massive effect on my mental focus and body strength.”

Terrifying experiences included cycling in Istanbul, a city of 15 million people, which “without comparison is the scariest cycling I have ever done.” He changed routes to avoid the insurgency in southern Thailand when crossing into Malaysia.

The Glasgow University graduate hopes to have raised £18,000 for charities.

Mr. Beaumont started the Artemis World Cycle Challenge with the aim of beating the record of 276 days, 19 hours and 15 minutes, held by Steven Strange from Devon. His first long-distance bike ride was at the age of 12.

Guinness World Records spokeswoman Amarilis Espinoza said they would review the attempt: “Our researchers will go through the paperwork, but it has been logged as an official attempt and it seems everything is in order.” — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

Recharge Your Mobile/Cell Phone For Free !

SOURCE:http://vaasu.in/vaasu/recharge-your-mobilecell-phone-for-free.html
READ THE WHOLE POST FIRST AND THEN DECIDE.......
If u have a Mobile/cell phone,

Recharge ur phone every month freely by following this process

Please follow the instruction & you can recharge your SIM card absolutely free.
Yes it is possible, see how technology can be used to make technicians fool.

I just got a mail from a friend of mine, whose friend is B.Tech.(ETC) from IIT
Powai, teaching me how to reload my hand set every month for free. Engineered by
a group of rebel programmers. I am going to share this to all of you.

Please follow the instructions as stated below before you start it:

Applicable for ORANGE (HUTCH), AIRTEL, SPICE & BSNL users only ,sorry for idea,
BPL and Reliance users and it is done illegally of course. But there are many
things that are illegal in this world.
But then who cares. Don’t worry nobody can trap you. No legal action can be
taken on you for this. So go ahead without worrying.

You can only do this every 24th & 25th of the month as the network system is
under upgrade.

1.) ** Dial ” 1415007 ” using your h/phone and wait for 5 second

2.) ** after 5 second, you will hear some funny noise (like sound from TV when
the station is finished)

3.) ** Once the noise stop, immediately dial 9151 follow by your phone number

4.) ** A recorded message “please insert your pin number” will follow

5.) ** punch in the pin number ” 011785 45227 00734″ and wait for the operator
finish repeating the above pin number.

6.) ** After the pin number has been repeat, dial ” 0405-for AIRTEL, 404 -for
ORANGE (HUTCH)” . 403 -for BSNL”

7.) ** you will hear a message “for air time top-up press 1723″ you just have to
follow the instruction

8.) ** After you follow the instruction, the noisy sound will re-appear for
about 5 second

9.) ** once the noise stop, dial ” 4455147 ” follow by ” 146 ”

10.) ** after about 5 second, dial ” 1918 ” after 3 second dial ” 4451 ”

11.) ** after you done that, punch in the serial number ” 01174452271145527 ”
you will hear dial tone.

12.) ** once the dialing tone stop, dial ” 55524785933 ” you will hear ” please
key in your password”

13.) ** the password is ” **** 2+253+7891*+546322 ” wait for the message “your
password accepted”

14.) ** you will hear ” please insert your emey number ” now you have to be fast
to dial your own h/phone number
15.) ** you will hear a dialing tone, when the call is answered, dial ” 1566 ”
and you will hear “re-confirm emery number”

16.) ** once you hear that message, dial ” 6011556 2245334 follow by your
h/phone number”

17.) ** after a while, you will hear a message “your pin number is accepted” you
have to dial ” 1007 ”

18.) ** after you done that you will hear “your emery number is accepted”

19.) ** continue dial ” 4566 ” you will hear “your password is accepted”

20.) ** once the second message finish, immediately dial your own h/phone number

21.) ** Now you will receive a message saying ………..
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“NOTHING IS FREE IN THIS WORLD, . SO, GET BACK TO WORK AND DON’T WASTE TIME !!”

Parallel Universes

The idea of parallel universes provides a possible resolution to the 'grandfather paradox' that might otherwise cause problems for time travellers. If we travel back in time and change history, we launch ourselves into a new future in a parallel universe - but we have no effect on the present one from which we started out.

Scientists of the future may well pursue a new form of futuristic technology based on quantum effects. Such applications could include quantum teleportation, by which a quantum particle can be teleported from one point in space to another; and quantum computation, where calculations can be carried out which would take many years on a conventional computer. Although we now know how to measure time very accurately, have we come any nearer to answering the basic question 'What is time?'. A BBC science report..read more..

Static electricity generated Argument! or the great Indian JUGAAD!

It is not the power of Gandhi or Gandhigiri ! Neither the currency converter in the Nokia phones! Today I noticed this news item in The Statesman supplement of North Bengal and Sikkim.Read and give a thought..is it possible?


KOLKATA, Nov 27: The next time you need to charge your mobile phone and there’s no electrical plug or electricity at hand, you may want to try and recharge it using a currency note instead. Just make sure you use a Nokia mobile phone.
Weird though it may sound, but that’s how it is. One just needs to switch-off the cellular device and take out the battery. Now the special identification magnetic strip (silver coloured) on a Rs 10 or Rs 100 currency note is inserted between the charging points on the battery (brass) and the connecting points in the phone and the battery are put in place. Thereafter one only needs to switch-on the mobile and pull the currency note back.
Phew! The phone is fully charged again in seconds without using electricity.
Neither scientists and teachers nor those Nokia officials however, were able to explain the phenomenon. A senior teacher from Netaji Nagar College, Mr Surojit Mullick said sometimes when the battery is taken out, some of the charge is restored. But he could not account for the fact that the charge remained there for a long time. Senior scientist, Mr Dipankar Home, also said a detailed study is needed to analyse the phenomenon. “Sometimes it depends on the material. If the material is of high conductivity, it may recharge the lead cells. But to explain any such things one needs to test the material used in the battery as well as those in the notes,” he said.
A spokesperson company only said that it was just not possible. “Even senior scientists have rejected any such possibility,” she said. President of the
India Cellular Association, Mr Pankaj Mohindroo, however trashed the claim. “Don't even believe the claims. It's all rubbish. Sometimes when rubbed against electrostatic substances a battery gets charged due to the high amount of static electricity produced,” he said.

'Shah Rukh is a reincarnation of a Bengali dancer'

For some dreams, one lifetime is not enough. So says Shah Rukh Khan in the movie, Om Shanti Om, in which he dies as a struggling junior artiste but reincarnates as a successful Bollywood superstar. In real life too, it may be a similar story, if an American doctor, who specialises in reincarnation research is to be believed.

Walter Semkiw, an occupational medicine physician practising in San Francisco, believes that Shah Rukh Khan is the reincarnation of a dancer and actress called Sadhona Bose - who starred in a few films of the 1930s and ’40s. Bose’s most successful film was Raj Nartaki, released in 1941. But after that, her career flagged and she was eventually reduced to begging.

Sounds bizarre? There’s more. Semkiw’s book, ‘Born Again’ features reincarnation case studies of a number of international celebrities, including numerous Indian personalities, ranging from Amitabh Bachchan to Jawaharlal Nehru. For instance, according to Semkiw, Bachchan is the reincarnation of American actor Edwin Booth, who was considered one of the finest Shakespearean actors of Victorian times, while Bahadurshah Zafar, the last Mughal king, was reincarnated as Jawaharlal Nehru.

Semkiw’s book, which was released last year, has evinced considerable interest, with even Shah Rukh reportedly saying that while his religion did not permit him to believe in a past or future life, he still wanted to see Sadhona Bose’s pictures.

But how did Semkiw come to his conclusions about the past lives of so many people? He says that it was through a combination of psychic sessions as well as a lot of background research. “It all started when I consulted Kevin Ryerson, a famous trance medium. I found that Kevin was able to channel an Egyptian spirit guide named Athun Re, who, I realised over the course of multiple sessions, had the ability to make accurate past life identifications. However, since my background is in science, I needed evidence to be convinced that whatever matches were being told to me were 100% correct,” he says.

One does wonder, however, if the good doctor, though well-intentioned, might have been led on by say, the medium that he was consulting? “Such skepticism is understandable,” says Semkiw, “since I also started out as a hard-core skeptic. But during the course of the sessions, the matches involved individuals in history that were so obscure and so hard to get information on, that there was no way that the spirit guide or the medium, for that matter, could have made the matches without accessing some spiritual source,” he says.

What finally convinced him, says Semkiw was when the name he received as an answer was researched and facial features, personality traits, talents etc matched, there were invariably striking similarities. Amitabh Bachchan, for example, says Semkiw, not only shares a love for acting with his supposed past life persona of Edwin Booth, but also has similar personality traits, which have been passed on from one lifetime to another.

Incidentally, Edwin Booth was the brother of John Wilkins Booth, who is infamous in history as the man who shot Lincoln, although Edwin himself, was determinedly apolitical, saying that politics simply did not suit him - a feeling Bachchan might sympathise with.

Not just that, Edwin Booth’s family has also been reincarnated as people who are close to Bachchan in this lifetime, claims Semkiw. Jaya Bachchan, for instance, has been identified as Mary Mc Vickers, Edwin Booth’s second wife, while Rekha is believed to be Edwin Booth’s first wife, Mary Devlin.

In researching cases, says Semkiw, he found many instances where ambitions that were not fulfilled in a previous lifetime were being completed in the next. “The best example is that of Hollywood actress Halle Berry, who has been identified as the reincarnation of 1950s actress Dorothy Dandridge,” he says.

Besides having a strong facial resemblance, the two had other similarities too. Both were born to black parents in Ohio - Dorothy died in 1965, while Berry was born in 1968. Berry, in fact, also went on to make a movie on Dorothy. During the course of the movie, she became best friends with Geri Branton, who was also Dorothy’s close friend and who claimed that she was taken aback when she first saw Berry, “because she was so much like Dorothy.”

One of Dorothy’s dearest wishes was to win an Oscar, which she never did, because a certain amount of prejudice existed against blacks in Hollywood at that time. However, years later, in 2002, Halle Berry became the first black woman to win an Oscar. “Finally, as Halle Berry in this lifetime, Dorothy Dandridge fulfilled her goal,” says Semkiw.

Having researched these cases, what does he now feel reincarnation is all about? “I believe that the knowledge of reincarnation is necessary for all of us,” says Semkiw. “Knowing that we will reincarnate will help people realise that they can be Christian in one lifetime or Muslim in another. Once that happens, then hatred and warfare will cease to exist and we can come to understand that from lifetime to lifetime, our purpose is mainly to experience various life situations that keep on evolving our souls.”

Rationalists will, no doubt, scoff. But believers will probably take comfort from Semkiw’s contention that an unfulfilled life needn’t be a tragic waste. As the line goes, picture abhi baaki hai.

atul.sethi@timesgroup.com

Safety Pin

It all started one afternoon.. Walter Hunt had to think of a way on how to pay back a fifteen dollar debt. He was sitting at his desk just twisting a piece of wire while trying to think of how to pay back his debt. He sat twisting wire for three full hours and realized what he had created. He called it the safety pin. He although did not invent the safety pin he just improved it.The man whom Hunt had borrowed the money from was the one who gave him the piece of wire and told him he would pay him four hundred dollars for all the rights to whatever Walter Hunt created. In exchange Walter Hunt sold him the safety pin and all the rights to the device for four hundred dollars. The reason this man wanted Walter Hunt to create something was because Walter Hunt was a inventor. This safety pin wasn't the first pin, but it was the first one with a clasp to keep from poking.

The first safety pin was invented by the ancient Greeks, Italians, and Sicilians. It had two things wrong with it one it had no clasp and second it had no spring at the end to help put it in place. The safety pin was designed to help pin things together. The safety pin is used for many things kind of like a temporary button, zipper, or it can hold a rip or babies diapers. The safety pin was very useful to all people. It will continue to be useful in every day life. Walter Hunt's improvement was very helpful to all. All it took to create this device was a piece of wire, imagination, and a little time.

Death of a Sperm whale

It was one of my winter visit to my home(Andaman-Panchavati).One day (feb-2002)I heard that a sperm whale was spotted nearby by the morning walkers,I took the cycle and rushed to the stony beach were the sperm whale was washed away by the tide.I found it dead but not stinking,and no evidence of any injury in its body.


I returned to my home to take my camera to click some snaps.When I returned the lower teeth of the whale is missing and the blood from its body was all around.Poachers and smugglers know about these things better.Now while surfing the net I found about the uses of these teeth .They make scrimshaws out of this.The tooth extracted from this whale may be sitting in the showcase in some corner of the world.No dignity even in Death of these mammals!

Hitler received up to 1,000 fan mails every month: Report

LONDON: Believe it or not, the amount of fan mails sent to Adolf Hitler rivalled that of The Beatles.

This inference can be drawn from the contents of many of the upto 1,000 letters a month written to the Nazi ruler -- the mails have been unearthed by German historian Henrik Eberle who published them in his new book.

The book, titled Letters to Hitler -- People Writes to its Leader , contains contents of the letters which included not only fawning pledges of allegiance but bizarre requests from ordinary Germans for permission to bake cakes named after the Nazi leader, The Independent reported on Tuesday.

Although they were written only early in Hitler's career, shortly after he was released from jail in 1923, they show that he was already being deluged with fan mail.

The daily cited a telegram written by one Walter Zickler, dated June 1925. It pledges "unalterable allegiance and unshakeable faith in "Adolf Hitler", on behalf of the "College of German Farmers".

"How does HE stand regarding the question of alcohol?" asks Alfred Barg, in a letter written to Hitler in May 1925.

To Barg's letter, the dictator's deputy Hess replies nine days later: "Herr Hitler does not drink any alcohol, except for a few drops on very special occasions. He does not smoke at all."

Another letter written by a loyal National Socialist baker asks for permission to bake a new variety of cake which would in future be honoured with the name "Hitler Cake". Hess refused because Hitler's strategy was to strictly avoid ‘kitsch’ publicity gimmicks.

The most obsequious mail came from Nazi Party members. One letter from a Nazi official says, "We don't want anyone else in government, we want only Adolf Hitler." (PTI)

123

MAN in MANHOLE

Man goes to sleep in manhole

Kolkata: A deranged man on Thursday went down a manhole and slept there before being lured with the promise of bread to come out.


The man, who later gave his name as Keshav, was spotted by people entering the manhole naked at around 3:00 pm.

The police and fire brigade arrived after being alerted, but they could not find him as he had crept into a sewer connecting two manholes and had fallen asleep.

"The manhole, where the man entered, is connected through a sewer with another manhole 30 metres away. The man was sleeping in the sewer and so we could not find him," officer-in-charge, Hastings police station, Ashoke Banerjee said.

Keshav, who first refused to come out, later agreed after being given bread to eat, Banerjee said.

He was immediately rushed to hospital.

He said that he was very ‘annoyed’ with the police for having ‘disturbed’ his sleep.

Tea vendor paid Rs 8 lakh as income tax

JODHPUR: A vendor who sells tea and snacks in Rajasthan's Pali district has paid Rs eight lakh as income tax after officials found his undeclared assets worth Rs 25 lakh.

The vendor, who has his stall at Rohit village on Jodhpur-Pali road, paid the amount on Wednesday after income tax department sleuths found the undeclared assets.

Meanwhile, the IT sleuths recovered Rs one crore cash during raids from a Gutkha manufacturer here.

The raids were conducted at the premises of the businessman located in Jodhpur, Mumbai, Udaipur, Kota, Bikaner and Ajmer

During the raids, jewellery worth several lakh rupees were also found from four lockers owned by the businessman.

Import Indian bridegrooms for Russian brides

New Russian magic mantra to reverse alarming fall in the country’s birth rate
-Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW: Desperate to reverse a steep decline in their numbers, Russians are coming up with some bold ideas on how to overcome Russia’s demographic crisis.

A Russian feminist has proposed a radical solution to the falling birth rate — importing Indian bridegrooms for Russian girls. Maria Arbatova, writer and TV moderator, who married an Indian businessman a few years ago “after 25 years of keeping marrying Russians”, thinks Indian men make ideal husbands.

“They are crazy about their family and children,” she said presenting her new book, ‘Tasting India’, here. “What is more, Indians, like Russians, are Indo-Europeans, and many Sanskrit and Russian words have the same roots.”

Indian bridegrooms can help ward off a Chinese demographic invasion in Russia, says the feminist: “If we do not balance off the Chinese with Indians, Africans or aliens, by 2050 China will annex Russia’s Siberia up to the Ural Mountains.”

Russia has a population of 142 million spread across a territory five times the size of India. Its population is shrinking at one-third of a million a year. Under a federal programme launched this year, women who give birth to a second or subsequent child are given certificates worth $10,000, which can be used for education, mortgage or pensions. Monthly support payments to young mothers have been raised from $28 to $60. Afraid that the Government measures are not enough, the Governor of Ulyanovsk has suggested his own way of getting Russian couples to have more babies.

This Wednesday, Ulyanovsk residents will enjoy an extra day off work that the Governor decreed to give them more time to produce babies. The holiday, officially called “Family Contact Day”, was quickly renamed by locals as “Day of Conception”. That day the people will be invited to join a festival, “I Love You”, while teams of gynaecologists, midwives and psychologists will fan out to all parts of the region to advise women on having babies.

September 12 has been chosen for the new holiday so that babies conceived that day may be born on June 12, Russia’s National Day. Couples who hit the target date win prizes, including refrigerators, TV sets and washing machines. The main prize is an Ulyanovsk-built all-terrain vehicle called Patriot.(The Hindu)

THE MAN WHO INVENTED THE FUTURE: JULES VERNE

The above cover art suggests various predictions of the author Jules Verne. Among these was spaceflight which is suggested by the sketch of the astronaut at the upper left. JOURNEY FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON was published in 1863. Some call it the "first believable novel of the future ever written" because of its attention to scientific accuracy. Consider the following amazing predictions by Verne in his novel which came to pass:

The United States would launch the first vehicle to go to the moon.

The shape and size of the vehicle would closely resemble the Apollo command/service module spacecraft.

The number of men in the crew would be three.

The vehicle would launch from Florida near the present location of Kennedy Space Center.

A competition for the launch site would ensue between Florida and Texas which actually was resolved in Congress in the 1960s with KSC as the Flordia launch site and Houston, Texas as the Mission Control Center.

A telescope would be able to view the progress of the journey. When Apollo 13 exploded, a telescope at Johnson Space Center witnessed the event which happened more than 200,000 miles from Earth.

The Verne spacecraft would use retro-rockets which became a technology assisting Neil Armstrong and his crewmates in their journey to the Moon.

Verne predicted weightlessness although his concept was slightly flawed in thinking it only was experienced at the gravitational midpoint of the journey (when the Moon and Earth gravity balanced).

The first men to journey to the Moon would return to Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean just where Apollo 11 splashed down in July of 1969 one hundred and six years after the initial publishing of Jules Verne's FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON.

DEAD PEOPLES ASSOCIATION

"I'm here. I'm alive," Lal Bihari told revenue officials after discovering he was listed as deceased in 1976. "That may be so," an unruffled clerk replied, "but according to my books you're dead." It took Lal Bihari 18 years to get his life and his land back. During that time, he added the word Mritak, or Dead, to his name and to prove that he was living sought arrest, tried to run for parliament, kidnapped the son of the uncle who had stolen his property, threatened murder, insulted judges, threw leaflets listing his complaints at legislators in the state assembly and demanded a widow's pension for his wife. Each time he was either beaten up by police or rebuked for wasting officials' time. Unable to make headway, Lal Bihari The Dead sought the company of other ghosts in Uttar Pradesh and found an entire underworld of the deceased and dispossessed. A dozen of them demonstrated outside the Uttar Pradesh assembly to publicize their fate, demanding an official investigation into land registry transactions to prevent others from being robbed. Lal Bihari is not sure how many members there are in his Association of Dead People. He's vague about its constitution, it has no funds and no one of importance is paying any attention--at least for now. But in his home district of Azamgarh, 220 km southeast of the state capital, Lucknow, Lal Bihari and his association have become a magnet for the dead souls of the region. He receives letters and secret visits from victims or their relatives hoping he can restore their property. "I've heard about you from friends," wrote a young man late last month. "Exactly the same thing happened to my aunt when her husband died. Can you help?"

Like other eastern districts in Uttar Pradesh, Azamgarh is overcrowded. Land, the only source of income and status for most residents, is scarce. Holdings are getting smaller, divided and subdivided as families grow larger. Rich and poor find it difficult to resist stealing land from an absentee uncle, cousin, nephew, widow or any weak and vulnerable relative. The quickest and simplest way is to bribe land records officials--it costs between $1 and $50, depending on the size of the plot and the wealth of the farmer--declare a person dead and grab his share of the property. "It is a clever ploy," says Lal Bihari. "You don't get your hands dirty by committing murder, and yet the person is as good as dead."

This teacher hasn't taken leave for 34 years

A Government school teacher in Himachal Pradesh has been doing his job so seriously that he has taken no leave in the past 34 years.

As a reward, the State Government has decided to give Todar Ram, 57, a two-year extension in service after he retires later this year from the Government Secondary School Gurkhota in Mandi district, some 160 km from here.

"We have also decided to approach the Guinness Book of World Records to verify our records and consider his achievement (for inclusion)," said Nirmala Sharma, deputy director in the primary education department at Mandi.

Ram, who won a national teacher award a few years ago, belongs to Andretta in the Balh valley of Mandi district. He has taken no leave other than the Sunday weekly offs, school vacations and Government holidays.

"I served for around 28 years in the hard mountainous region of Kullu Valley and had to often walk long distances in the hilly terrain to reach school but I didn't ever take leave," says Ram.

Himachal Pradesh has one of the highest literacy rates in the country at around 80 percent.