On 15 November 2008, pirates – some 450 nautical miles (830 km) off the coast of Somalia, East Africa – captured one of the world´s largest oil tankers, the Sirius Star (UAE). It is 330 metres (1,100 feet long) with a gross tonnage (GT) of 162,252 tons and a total cargo capacity of 318,000 metric tons deadweight. At the time of capture it was carrying a load of crude oil bound for the USA valued at US$110 million (£77.1 million). It was taken by the Continue reading →

A merger between British cellular communications company Vodafone Group Plc, formerly known as Vodafone Airtouch Plc, and German telecoms company Mannesmann AG, valued at £103.4 billion ($171.1 billion), was completed on April 12, 2000. The company reported more than 59 million subscribers worldwide in July 2000. It operates in 25 countries, on five continents.

Supercells are powerful thunderstorms which form around a mesocyclone, a deep, rotating updraft. At up to several kilometres across, they can last several hours, making them the longest-lasting and largest of all thunderstorms. They often occur on the Great Plains of the USA and can spawn tornadoes.

The largest trumpet ensemble involved 1,166 participants at a concert organised by Napoleón Gómez Silva in Oruro, Bolivia, on 19 February 2006. The trumpet ensemble was part of a much larger concert involving around 5,000 different instruments.

The largest TV audience for a wedding occurred on 29 July 1981, during the marriage of HRH Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer (both UK), which was seen by an estimated 750 million people in 74 countries. At the time the largest outside broadcast in British History, it had an audience in Britain of 39 million.

The largest user-generated virtual economy exists in Second Life (Linden Lab, 2003), which saw $567 million (£355 million) worth of in-game transactions take place in 2009. 2011

The largest virtual community for teens is Habbo (Sulake, 2000), which has over 15 million users as of August 2010. Featured in Guinness World Records Gamers Edition 2011

The largest is the inferior vena cava, which returns the blood from the lower half of the body to the heart and is slightly larger than the aorta.

The crews of the ISS are ferried to and from Earth by Russian Soyuz spacecraft and US space shuttles. The space shuttle orbiters are the largest, measuring 37.23 m long by 23.79 m wide and 17.86 m high. While the Soyuz craft remain docked for months at a time, and act as lifeboats, the shuttle only stays docked with the ISS for a matter of days. The longest a shuttle has been docked to ISS was 11 days 20 hours and 36 minutes, by the Continue reading →

Native to shallow freshwater lakes and bayous in the Amazon basin, the world”s largest water lily is Victoria amazonica, whose gigantic floating leaves measure up to 3 m (10 ft) across, and are held in place upon an underwater stalk 7-8 m (23-26 ft) long. The undersurface of its leaves are supported by a sturdy series of rib-like crossridges to keep the leaves flat and also prevent them from collapsing. Indeed, it is the pattern of these ribs that is said to have inspired the Continue reading →