Month: December 2016
The 1980s ex-Wham star passed away peacefully at home according to Thames Valley Police and South Central Ambulance Service who attended a property in Oxfordshire at 13:42 GMT on Christmas day. His publicist said : “It is with great sadness that we can confirm our beloved son, brother and friend George passed away peacefully at…
Her Majesty the Queen’s Christmas message to the people of the Commonwealth said “Acts of goodness” can inspire even though the world’s problems can seem too big to change. In her annual Christmas Day address she said she drew strength from “ordinary people doing extraordinary things and Thousands of “small acts of goodness” can make…
Pope Francis has addressed a late-night Christmas Mass at the Vatican. The head of Catholic Church denounced the continuing suffering of children, bombing in Syrian cities like Aleppo, and mentioned those who faced hunger and danger on migration routes. Inside St Peter’s Basilica Saturday’s Mass celebrating the birth of Jesus is the first major event…
Dava Sobel, the bestselling author of Longitude, explains elegantly the story of the female “computers” and their painstaking tabulation who worked on the classification of stars through the latter half of 19th and first half of the 20th century. Astronomer Dr Henry Draper, and his heiress wife Anna in 1882 have invited an eminent gathering…
Cassini captured this stunning image of the 52-mile-wide Saturn moon that orbits outside the F ring 25,200 miles from Pandora during its closest-ever flyby. According to NASA the image was captured in green light using Cassini’s narrow-angle camera at a scale of 787 feet (240 meters) per pixel. Just days ago NASA released another spectacular…
Indian spinner Ravichandran Ashwin (30) has been named the international Cricket Council’s world player of the year and is the third Indian to win the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy and is also ICC Test cricketer of the year. Alistair Cook was named Captain of the ICC Test team of 2016. The voting period closed in…
The Oresund Bridge ( Oresundsbroen in Danish) and (Oresundsbron in Swedish) is a combined railway and motorway bridge across the Oresund strait between Denmark and Sweden. It is engineering marvel that with direct connection from the Danish capital of Copenhagen to the Swedish city of Malmo. The bridge runs 5 miles ( 8km) to an…
Since the 2008 British tax payer bailed out and rescued Lloyds bank, has agreed to pay £1.9bn in cash to acquire credit card company MBNA from a subsidiary fo Bank of America. MBNA will be maintained as a separate brand. The deal is expected to increase Lloyds’ share of the UK credit card market by receivables from…
Winter solstice occurs today 21st December 2016, the longest night of the year, The sun is closer to the horizon than any other time of the year and the North Pole is tilted 23.5 degrees away from the sun. Europeans celebrate the winter solstice by feasting of Juul or Yule lasting for 12 days which…