The lowest birth weight recorded for a surviving infant, of which there is definite evidence, is 260 g (9.17 oz) in the case of Rumaisa Rahman (USA) who was born at Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood, Illinois, USA, on 19 September 2004 at 25 weeks 6 days gestation. The second of twins born to Mahajabeen Shaik (India), her sister Hiba weighed 580 g (1 lb 4.4 oz) . Rumaisa measured 24.13 cm (9.5 in) long. She was discharged from hospital in Febraury 2005.
The world’s least dense solid is an aerogel produced by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, USA. With a density of just 1mg/cm3 (0.25 grains/in3), this aerogel is lighter than air itself (1.2 mg/cm3, 0.3 grains/inch3) and is virtually invisible to the untrained eye. Aerogel with this density was first created on 10 April 2003. note, the ‘3’ after ‘cm’ and ‘in’ should be superscript – as in cubed.
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. led more than 250,000 demonstrators in a march down the Mall in Washington DC, and then gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial led on 28 August 1963, to promote the urgency of equal civil rights for all Americans, irrespective of race or colour.
With a combined weight of 1,385 g (3 lb 0.8 oz) Peyton (585 g (1 lb 4.6 oz)), Jackson (420g (14.8 oz)) and Blake (380g (13.4 oz)) Coffey (all USA) became the lightest triplets to survive when they were born by emergency Cesarean section at the University of Virginia Hospital, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA on 30 November 1998. Peyton was discharged first on 12 March 1999, followed by Blake on 3 April 1999 and Jackson on 9 April 1999.
The longest scanned document is 1,181 m (3,875 ft) achieved on a Trüper 3600 scanner by Böwe Bell + Howell (USA) at the HIMSS Annual Conference, Orlando, Florida, USA, on 25 February 2008. HIMSS = Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society The + in Bowe Bell + Howell is part of the name.
Scientists at Cornell University (USA) have used a technique involving tiny oscillating cantilevers to physically detect a mass of just 6.3 attograms. The work was carried out by Professor Harold Craighead and Rob Ilic (both USA) and published in April 2004. An attogram is a billionth of a billionth of a gram.
Although they superficially resemble true jellyfish and are distantly related to them, siphonophores are very different, special creatures. Remarkably, each individual siphonophore is actually a colony or super-organism, i.e. each part of its body is in reality a distinct highly specialized organism or zooid in its own right, adapted anatomically to fulfil a certain specific function (e.g. floating, stinging, feeding, reproducing). In other words, each of its tentacles is a separate organism, as is its float, each of its reproductive organs, each of its bells,
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The longest 50-50 rail grind on a skateboard is 30.62 m (100 ft 5.75 in) by Rob Dyrdek (USA) on MTV’s The Rob & Big Show in Los Angeles, California, USA on 17 September 2007.
The world’s longest running annual class reunion belongs to the Cherokee County Community High School’s class of 1929, which held its 77th class reunion in Columbus, Kansas, USA on 27 June 2006. Of the original class of 110 people, 6 are still alive, and only 4 former class members attended the reunion. They are already planning next year’s reunion! Record updated by aespinoza on the 20 July 2006.
A baby boy born to Anna Bates (née Swan) (Canada) (1846–88), who measured 2.27 m (7 ft 5.5 in), gave birth to a boy measuring 76 cm (30 in) long at her home in Seville, Ohio, USA on 19 January 1879, but the baby (the heaviest birth at 10.8 kg (23 lb 12 oz))died 11 hours later.