Now officially the most successful movie in history – at least in terms of box-office takings – James Cameron’s (USA) Avatar (USA, 2009) achieved the box-office triple, topping first the foreign chart (23 January 2010), then the world chart (25 January 2010) and finally the domestic (2 February 2010). It grossed a global total of $2,768,463,014 as of 23 September 2010. First movie to gross over $2 billion
Walt Disney’s first full length feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (USA 1937), took US$184.9 million (then £37,378,867) at the box office world-wide, equivalent to US$1,633,582,523 (£1,020,989,077) today. The film took four years to make at a cost of US$1.5 million (then £303,398) equivalent to US$13,252,424 (£8,282,765). The “special” Academy Award granted to the picture on 10 March 1938 consisted of one regular sized award and seven smaller sized awards.
Shrek the Third (USA, 2007) grossed $121,629,270 (£79.2 million) at the domestic box office over its opening weekend beginning on 18 May 2007.
The highest capacity jet airliner is the double deck Airbus 380 (manufactured by EADS (Airbus S.A.S.)), which first flew in Toulouse, France on 27 April 2005 and is due to enter its first airline service in October 2007 with Singapore Airlines. Whilst it has a nominal seating capacity of 555 seats, it has a potential maximum seating capacity of 853 depending on the interior fuselage fit. It has a wing span of 79.8 m (261 ft 8 in), a range of 15,000 km (9,320 miles;
Continue reading →
NASA’s Voyager 2 probe encountered the planet Uranus and its collection of moons in 1986. The small moon Miranda, with a diameter of 472 km, has a surface made up of a jumble of bizarre geological features. One of the most prominent of these features is an enormous cliff with a vertical relief of about 20km 12 miles. This cliff, named Verona Rupes, is more than ten times higher than the walls of the Grand Canyon on Earth. That this towering cliff is so huge
Continue reading →
The highest concentration of lightning, according to NASA´s Global Hydrology and Climate Center is 158 lightning bolts per km² (409 per mi²) every year, received by an area near the town of Kikuka, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to NASA’s Global Hydrology and Climate Center, an area near the town of Kifuka, Democratic Republic of the Congo, receives 158 lightning bolts per km² (409 per mi²) every year. Year round activity occurs as the climate in central Africa changes only slightly with the seasons.
Continue reading →
According the human rights organisation Survival International, there are approximately 100 uncontacted tribes in the world today. More than half of these are believed to live in the Amazon rain forest in the Brazil-Peru region. Many of these tribes choose to have no contact with the outside world, sometimes by exhibiting hostility to outsiders, including neighbouring tribes.
The country with the highest concentration of millionaires (measured in US dollars) is Singapore. An astonishing 8.5 per cent of households have $1 million in assets under management.
The Nurek dam, on the river Vakhsh, Tajikistan is 300 m (984 ft) high and was completed in 1980. The Rogunskaya dam, also across the river Vakhsh, was due to reach 335 m (1098 ft) in height but the break-up of the former Soviet Union in 1991 prevented its completion.
World military spending in 2010 was estimated at 1,630 billion US dollars (then approximately £1,053 billion), equivalent to 2.6 % of world GDP. Spending by the US military accounts for 43% of the total.