Caenorhabditis elegans, a 1-mm (0.03-in) long soil-dwelling, non-parasitic nematode worm, is the first species of multicellular animal whose entire genome (genetic code) has been sequenced. Although its entire adult body consists of only 959 cells (humans have trillions), it has 100 million genetic bases comprising at least 18,000 genes, and more than 50 % of known human genes correspond with versions possessed by C. elegans. The monumental task of mapping the worm’s entire genome was the brainchild of Dr Sydney Brenner (South Africa), who initiated Continue reading →

Old Doc Yak, a tail coated billy-goat in striped pants, was brought to the screen by Chicago Tribune cartoonist Sidney Smith (USA) in a Selig Polyscope series started in July 1913. It was the much loved animal cartoon characters who eventually gave animated films a distinct appeal of their own as suitable entertainment for children.

Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir) (Israel/Germany/France/USA, 2008) was the first animation to be Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie, directed by Ari Folman (Israel) tells the story of an ex-soldier piecing together his shattered memories of an Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon war.

The world’s earliest apex predator was Anomalocaris – a large, superficially crustacean-like carnivorous invertebrate, which inhabited shallow seas worldwide during the early to mid-Cambrian Period, 540-500 million years ago. Up to 1 m long, it was huge in size relative to all other animals alive at that time, and is believed to have preyed upon trilobites and primitive shrimp-like organisms.

In October 2008, a 43-year old Japanese woman was arrested in Miyazaki, Japan, for killing her online husband, or avatar – a digital persona – after becoming angry at the fact that he had divorced her online in the context of the popular interactive game “Maple Story”. She was jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data using her gaming partner´s ID and password to log on to the game and “murder” her partner. She had obtained the log in information Continue reading →

The earliest arcade maze game is Gotcha. It was developed by Atari in 1973 and was a departure from the popular bat ‘n’ ball games on which the company was founded.

Killer Instinct was the first arcade videogame to include a hard disk drive. The extra digital storage was used to include pre-rendered backgrounds, allowing for more realistic graphics. Featured in Guinness World Records Gamer”s Edition 2010

The first artificial satellite was successfully put into orbit by an inter-continental ballistic missile from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at Tyuratam, Kazakhstan, 275km 170miles east of the Aral Sea and 250km 155miles south of the town of Baikonur, on the night of 4 Oct 1957. It reached an altitude of between 228.5km (perigee or nearest point to Earth) and 946km (apogee or farthest point from Earth) 142miles and 588miles, and a velocity of more than 28,565km/h 17,750mph. This spherical satellite Sputnik 1 (`Fellow Traveller’), officially designated Continue reading →

wNv-Gaming (China) was the first Asian team to reach the No.1 spot in the GotFrag rankings in May 2006. They went on to become the first Asian team to win a World eSport Games (WEG) Masters title in 2006. Guinness World Records Gamers’ Edition 2009.

While en route to Jupiter, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft performed a flyby of the asteroid Ida in 1993. On 17 February 1994 examination of the images from the flyby revealed Ida, which is 53.6 km along its longest axis, has its own natural satellite. Dactyl measures just 1.6 x 1.4 x 1.2 km in diameter and orbits Ida once every 20 hours.